Windows 7 Slow Boot / Slow Logon (Why I do what I do)

February 20, 2012 jeffstokes2014 Uncategorized 14

Lately, the last year or two, I’ve been slowly drawn (moth to flame almost) into the remediation of the problem state of Windows slow boot or slow logon conditions.  Interestingly enough, Microsoft Premier Field Engineering management allows (and encourages in many cases) folks to focus on things of interest to them.  Follow our passions as it were.  Mine happens to be the end user.  I care about the end user experience as it relates to our products and systems.  If the end user experience fails, the cloud fails, the back office fails, the new application rollout fails, the migration to a new image fails.  Etc..

How long does your enterprise system take to boot up to a usable desktop?  2 minutes?  3?  5?  10?  Is this a problem for your business productivity?  Has your organization had a WDRAP?  Why not?

Is it all about boot times and logon times though?  Does it go beyond that?  Is the system sluggish all the time?  Just some of the time, randomly?  Do applications launch slowly?  Does the UI hang for the end user randomly?  Do they complain?

Are you doing something about it?

Help me help you…

If you haven’t already, apply these hotfixes we’ve agreed can help client performance post Service Pack 1 for Windows 7:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/yongrhee/archive/2012/02/19/list-of-performance-hotfixes-post-sp1-for-windows-7-sp1.aspx

Are you doing VDI and having slow performance?  Have you done any of these steps (at a minimum):

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/list-of-resources-on-windows-7-optimization-for-vdi.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0

Do you have slow boot up times?  Have you looked at the logon times of your services like this:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/jeff_stokes/archive/2009/12/18/why-do-i-have-long-boot-times.aspx

Do you need to dig deeper, like this:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/jeff_stokes/archive/2011/12/05/xperf-o-rama.aspx

Have a scenario I didn’t cover?  Post a comment and I’ll think up a data collection and analysis path if I can.

Thanks,

Jeff Stokes

14 Comments

  1. The Dude is always happy to help sir!

    For Windows 7, have you checked your Group Policy Operational Event log?  You might see something in there.  Also an ETW trace of the logon process where it hangs would be good to look at in WPA, using the Group Policy Events as a filter.

    Reply

  3. Dear Jeff,

    After installing several updates and all drivers from the manufacturer site, my SSD upgraded hp 8440p still spends 45 seconds to logon windows. Any comments? Will it be ok to send you the winbootrecord file?

    Best,

    Umut

    Reply

  5. Hi Jeff,

    This is a great blog and very helpful.

    I have looked through your suggestions but hoped you could help me get to the root of my issue a bit more quickly than having to work through your suggestions as the issue is very specific.

    We're in the early stages of rolling out Windows 7 in my organisation and in the main it's going very well and user feedback is very positive but we do have a problem with slow offline logons and logoffs.

    But here's the thing – it's only when a NON DOMAIN network connection is present (actually I'm not even sure if the wireless needs to connect to a network but just be enabled).   If you have no physical connection and wireless is disabled both logon and logoff are around the 30 second mark – with a connection enabled they are much increased – log off in particular can be 20 -30 mins!

    Having done a lot of searching around I can find people with the same issue but no answer!

    It feels like a group policy setting – like the machine is timing out trying to find a DC because it has a network interface enabled – or timing out on a script that it should only run on the domain.

    I should also mention that logon and logoff on the domain are fine.

    Any suggestions you might have would be much appreciated.

    Thanks,

    Andy

    Reply

  6. Hi Umut, thanks for the comments, I followed up offline with you.  Thanks for the questions!  Lets see if we can't figure out what's going on.

    Reply

  7. Dear Jeff,

    I am having slow logon since I've upgraded to SSD. I ran the analysis and it seems in Winlogon graph that Profiles and Logon notification runs about 35 seconds. The latter must be the screen info; is there any way I could improve 'Profiles' loading?

    Thanks,

    Umut

    Reply

  8. Hi Jeff,

    Thanks for getting back to me.

    I actually tracked down the log off delay to a badly configured GPO which I've now rectified and logoffs are 30 seconds ish.

    Just logon to sort out now – it's around a 1 minute 30 seconds now to logon offline when a network connection is present, more like 30 seconds when all interfaces are inactive or logging on to the domain.

    I've changed the default wait of 30 seconds to 10 seconds in the GPO for "Set maximum wait time for the network if a user has a roaming user profile or remote home directory" but that doesn't seem to make a difference.

    Now the issue is logon specific I plan to do some more testing and looking through the logs.  I don't think it's a script timeout as we have no logon or startup scripts configured, it does seem like network state detection – I'll have a lookout for 'identifying' in the logs (any you would look at in particular?).  I have seen plenty of events for the machine transitioning between public and private networks and there doesn't seem to be any delay there.

    Andy

    Reply

  11. sir..
    After creating user profile log on windows system take much time.But same user log on server system take very less time.so please tell me exact right answer.

    Reply

  13. I’m having something similar…but can’t find issue…..

    Just recently started about 6 mos ago, random systems (Win 7) would stay offline after a reboot when leaving for the day. The user would try login in the morning and the welcome screen would stick. They would wait up to 30 mins then do a hard reset and when system came up they were able to login. Any suggestions would be helpful!

    Reply

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