Windows xp speeds login to active directory network

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hi - lcan anybody comment on what your winxp and ad (2008r2) login speeds are like from boot

Would like to compare speeds

desktop machine spec - 3gig dual core, 2 gig ram, sata drive, gig network

from switch on to logon ready for user to key in username and password

.58 secs

from user/password to word 2007 open .45 secs

Network has lots of group policy etc / sophos and connected network printers and drives via group policy extensions

User have roaming profiles ( most are about 8 -10 meg) and connect to a few shares at logon

network has around 600 - 700 users on at any time.


do you think just under 2 mins is good / bad / fair?

what speeds do you get if connected to a large nework?

xp boots to windows in about 40 secs then speeds time preparing network connections etc but is ready at about .55 for user name.


any comments and speed from you would be nice.

James
 
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We spent a long time looking at this - in the end we just put extra RAM in machines. Machines become increasingly bogged down. I think the only cure is regular imaging if you want to keep login times down. It definitely helps to have a machine maintenance schedule too - especially if your machines are heavily utilised. Ours were used by maybe 5-10 users per day, using local profiles. They quickly became slow. Profile deletion, disk cleanups and defragment tended to return the PC to a usable state.

Just under 2 minutes sounds fair to me, but it depends on the spec of the machine. Put a SSD in there and suddenly you'll notice a DRAMATIC increase in performance. Also, a lot of our machines had 512 RAM - so we spent some money upgrading machines which weren't due to be replaced (5yr programme), and replaced about 300. The complaints regarding login speeds have largely disappeared for us.

One other thing to remember - login is actually the point until the desktop shows - after that, it's all local bits and bobs loading.

Lastly - we moved a lot of machines to Windows 7 - the login speeds are no better in my opinion.
 
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yes I think that next years desktop replacement will have ssd in them - I can see the price dropping to where I want them to be. Our images is about 30 gig on xp and if we move to windows 7 maybe towards the 50 mark.

Yes our full desktop shows with all icons just under 2 mins.

We do delete stuck profiles as part of the login process ,not sure if we have defrag set or not in AD.

when we want to speed up the older machines we just build a new image and refog that to the ones with the same hardware.

thanks for the input.
 
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Thats not bad at all - ours was upto 5 mins at one point early this year - some judicous, erm, tuning of the sysvol etc helped get it to about 3 mins.
Were testing SSDs in HP 7xxx series desktops and thats quite a difference!!!

Odd are well start doing a regular reimage soon though.
 

Xez

Xez

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Indeed. It's not uncommon for it to take longer than 10 minutes from cold boot to functional desktop.

Some of our users have this, we just rebuild there profile folders and copy the data back across and it speeds it up no-end. We do try and get all of our users to save any documents onto there own user drive but I would say half don't do this!

I think our place is due a refresh in desktop's as they're about 4 years old and normally renewed every 3 years.
 
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We do try and get all of our users to save any documents onto there own user drive but I would say half don't do this!

Good advice! I have GPOs set up preventing roaming profile users from modifying the desktop, hence all personal user files must be saved to either the user's home folder or mapped network drives.

Never had a problem with logon times (similar setup to yours), other than Symantec Corporate AV slowing things down on cold boot with DAT downloads from the server.
 
Soldato
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Just timed mine (probably one of the highest specs on-site).

1.05 to the login screen with fast logon optimization off
3.30 until the machine is usable and around 4 minutes until all HDD activity stops.

P.S I'm not using roaming profiles.
 
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