Question : Network Login Speed

I just have a couple quick questions concerning netowrk login and the speed at which that happens.

We are trying to figure out why it takes certain users much longer to login to the netork than others.  We have been troubleshooting one machine for a while now and have tried many things and it still takes about 2 1/2 minutes to geticons on the screen from the time you hit the enter key to login.  This always happens from a cold boot.  If we then log off then right bak on with the same user the icons appear in 10 seconds (Why is that?).  Other users on the netowork (same segment) take way less time from a cold boot.  Others may tke longer.   I'm guessing that the user profiles(all local profiles) may have something to do with that but i can't seem to prove that.  Other user profiles on that same computer appear faster but they are new profiles.  We tried to disable all star4tup items and that only helped a few seconds.

We are trying to figure out some of the reasons for this so we can improve the client experience every morning.  If anyone has any comments or suggestions that might help us out that would be appreciated.  These are all Dell Optiplex machines running XP Pro with plenty of RAM and running on a 2003 Domain.  Any help is appreciated.  Thanks!!

Answer : Network Login Speed

Another way to tell for sure is to use Wireshark (www.wireshark.org) on a machine on the same HUB (not switch) and see what kind of network traffic is generated during the startup process.  Look specifically for the amount of data transferred, the time delays between various steps, and so on.

Larger profiles, especially when the profiles are stored on the network server, will obviously take much longer to transfer down to the workstation.  Comparing the profile sizes, therefore, should be the first step.  Beyond that, though, you should look for any other anomalies, such as network packets lost (which Wireshark should display on a easy-to-identify black background) or other network-level issues which might be restricting traffic flow.  

If you have two machines, one which works well and one which doesn't, it should be relatively easy to get two traces and compare them.