Environment
Novell Client for Windows 2000/XP/2003 4.91 Support Pack
2
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Situation
The login script is taking a long time to be processed.
The first drive is mapped quickly.
Subsequent drive mappings occur, but they are delayed.
There is a 40 or 80 second pause between the first drive
mapping and subsequent drive mappings.
The pause is in 40 second increments.
The LAN trace shows that the workstation is not doing much on
the wire.
If you ping the workstation during the pause, the workstation
will respond to the ping packets.
If you login to the workstation first and then login to the
network afterwards, then login scripts executed at normal
speed.
Resolution
The problem was related to the "Dell Wireless WLAN Tray
Service" running on the local workstation. The customer ran
the msconfig.exe utility that is a part of Windows XP and
they disabled all software in the "Startup" category, and all
non-Microsoft services from the "Services" category. They
rebooted the workstation and they were able to login quickly.
They then went through each service and narrowed it down to the
above service. To fis the problem, you can do one of the two
following items:
1.) Contact Dell and see if they have an updated version
of their "Dell Wireless WLAN Tray Service" and install it on to
your workstation.
2.) You can disable/remove the service and let Windows
manage your wireless card instead of the Dell wireless
utility.
TROUBLESHOOTING:
A LAN trace was taken and this is where the 40 and 80 second
pauses were noticed. The laptop was not sending any data
during this time. That is why the ping test was used to see
if the workstation was completely hung, or if it was able to reply
to packets.
Ultimately msconfig.exe was used to rule out any third-party
(non-Novell) software. Once these non-Microsoft, non-Novell
applications and services were removed, the login scripts processed
normally and there were no delays in the processing of the login
scripts. The customer then methodically went through each
service and startup utility, until they found the service that was
causing the problem.