Specific Users experience Slow Login on XP, but no issues on Windows 7?

Question

I am finding specific domain users endure ~15 minute login to XP machines, but have no issue logging onto Windows 7. Other users are able to login to these XP machine swithout issue.

When the affected user logs onto an XP machine, it will be stuck at the status "Loading Personal Settings"

An xp built from installation media experiences this problem for only this set of users.

The users don't seem to share anything in common. We have tested by removing all Group Policy settings except those in default domain policy.

Anybody have any idea what could possibly be happening here?

EDIT: None of the users are configured with Roaming Profiles

Answer 1

The most common delays occur because of misconfigured DNS. Ensure the DNS server the clients are pointing to are working properly and are part of your AD domain (have the appropriate service records for Active Directory). DO NOT (as many people commonly do) list ISP DNS servers EVEN as secondary DNS servers. If you need secondary DNS servers, use OTHER Windows DCs/DNS servers.

Next, if you are still having problems, edit the registry as per KB325376, How to enable verbose startup, shutdown, logon, and logoff status messages and you can more easily see what steps the delays are occurring on.

Also, have you: *Run Chkdsk on the machines with issues? *Rebuilt the user profiles on the machines? *Reviewed event logs on the workstations?

And if you really want to get technical you can try using Process Monitor (free utility from Microsoft/SysInternals) to see everything that's going on as the system boots and the user logs in. If a file or series of files are trying to be accessed but are otherwise inaccessible (or registry settings, etc), this can help tell you if the event logs don't record anything.