Annoying system pause

Well, here's a shot in the dark: what's he got on the desktop, and where is it stored? If he's got large files, instead of shortcuts, and he's pulling them across the network, that would cause it.

Have you checked to see if their are other programs loading in the background,and also if you have the virus scan loading at start-up.

1. Check the Bios settings for the embedded NIC vs the windows system settings.

2. Do you show good connectivity at the NIC and the Hub/Switch side? I've had machines that lose the "green light" at one side or another, yet can connect via IPX. Why, I'm baffled, but switching ports in the hub cleared the problem.

3. If using DHCP, check to see if the MAC address of the NIC card has been flagged as "bad". As I'm netware not NT, I wouldn't know where to start to do this, but someone else here might.

ok... those were the obvious 3. Now for the unobvious. You mentioned that the system seems to pause right after the login script runs.

Do you have any policies, or agents running that span partitions ( sorry, that's netware) I guess you NT guys call them domains. I once had a user created in one partition, and a lazy tech just moved his user object to another, just happened to be at the far end of our slowest connection ( 56kbps ugh! ) and the user had to claim his policies from the other side. The policies and processes with Netware load after the login script.

Also check to see if you have some dynamic desktop configuration happening, ie pulling desktop wallpaper, or somesuch from another domain.

Probably not the case, but have you checked to see if the user has a sound associated with Windows startup, and if so try removing it. Sometimes a corrupted sound file can cause unusual symptoms.

--Bart

I would check on the policy issue. I know that it can add alot of time to the login process and will cause the pause you are talking about. I'm guessing you can authenticate with netbeui? Other thing to check is to see if the remote registry was installed on the PC if so that is your culprit. I have had field computers hang for what seemed to be forever and found that this was what was running. What you can do to check on this is, while the sytem is "paused" do the old ctrl+alt+delete and see what applications are running. Simply having removed remote reg does not always get rid of it. I had to manually go in delete all TCP/IP files after removing the protocol (.dll's don't get deleted when removing the protocol so the problem will come right back as soon as you re add the TCP/IP protocol even if you choose to over write files). Once I removed the associated .dll's which I don't remember off the top of my head and reinstalled tcp/ip it worked fine.

All I can think of is that when you installed the TCP/IP protocol it got set as the default protocol . Since it is only needed for administrative purpose you can set IPX/SPX as your default protocol .

You can do this on the Network applet in control panel . select IPX/SPX --> Your NIC , then on the advanced tab check "set this protocol as default protocol" . Also when you switch to TCP/IP for good , you should make sure that the default is set to TCP/IP on all the machines .

Good Luck !

We have run into this problem before at my company, except the delay can be as long as 10 minutes. This is almost always a profile issue. There are several things we do to fix it, rebooting after each step:

1) If this machine is name brand (such as Dell, Compaq, or HP), and is using the factory load; get rid of the diagnostics program that is usually installed. e.g. We use Dell, and the program is called Dell DMI.

2) Disable remote registry (from the passwords control panel, under the remote admin tab). Don't know why this works, but sometimes it does.

3) Delete all the .PWL files on the machine. Sometimes a booger in a cached password will cause the machine to hiccup at login.

4) Disable multiple profiles by going to the passwords control panel (user profiles tab) and selecting "All users share the same settings". You may have to stitch the user's profile together again after doing this.

5) If all else fails, go to a DOS prompt and delete USER.DAT from the user's profile folder (NOT the one in the Windows directory). When the user logs on again, it will spend a couple minutes building a new USER.DAT file. NOTE: If roaming profiles are enabled, you must also delete USER.DAT from the user's home directory on the server after you have shut down his machine, but before you reboot it.

If none of this works, then the problem is with the default profile. Unfortunately, there is no way to fix the default profile.

If you look at your comment to answer number one , you stated that your server is configured with both IPX/SPX and TCP/IP and that when you remove TCP/IP everything works fine . My question is ....Where do you remove TCP/IP from ie workstation or Server or both ???? if your answer is both then I gather that your default protocol on the server is TCP/IP ...In that case you will also have to make IPX/SPX the default or atleast higher than TCP/IP in the binding order on the server .
One thing is strange that by making IPX/SPX your default protocol on the workstation your logon scripts should still run , as your server is configured to use IPX/SPX also ....

Strange but true , Iguess .....

Good Luck anyways!!!!

Check the registry in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices
See if there are any services running that shouldn't be there. Compac has a diagnostic program that might be causing the problem. If so it will be listed here and can removed.

Lee

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