Why is comain connected clients slower than local "single" clients

August 15, 2007

Hi,

We have about 30 or so clients connected to an W2003 server domain. the

computers are not top-notch but should be more than enough to handle simple

office work. The client computers are mostly Dell Dimensions 4600; 2.8GHz

512Mb RAM.

Login is very slow, sometimes it takes as long as 40 seconds to log in -

sometimes even more than a minute. In general everything feels slow and

unresponsive. If I login on the computers local profile it takes about 5

seconds to login and the computer performs at twice the speed.

I would like to know why connecting your computer to a windows domain so

drastically changes a computers performance? I would like to know what part

of a computer takes the most impact upon connecting it to a windows domain

(harddrive, memory, cpu... etc) and why this happends.

All our client computers are connected to the server with very fast gigabyte

NIC's, and transfering large files from clients to computer is amazingly fast

- still, general performance is horrible.

Norton Antivirus is also an insane system resource hog and completely

disables the computer to be efficiently used for the 20-30 minutes it takes

to scan (which is does twice a week). If my employers would let me, Id switch

it for working AV software in the blink of an eye. :P

Thanks in advance.

August 15, 2007

Re: Why is comain connected clients slower than local "single" clients

"it-support" <itsupport@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

news:CA21A8D7-8473-4BEC-8518-9BFDFB931892@microsoft.com...

> Hi,

>

> We have about 30 or so clients connected to an W2003 server domain. the

> computers are not top-notch but should be more than enough to handle

> simple

> office work. The client computers are mostly Dell Dimensions 4600; 2.8GHz

> 512Mb RAM.

>

> Login is very slow, sometimes it takes as long as 40 seconds to log in -

> sometimes even more than a minute. In general everything feels slow and

> unresponsive. If I login on the computers local profile it takes about 5

> seconds to login and the computer performs at twice the speed.

>

> I would like to know why connecting your computer to a windows domain so

> drastically changes a computers performance? I would like to know what

> part

> of a computer takes the most impact upon connecting it to a windows domain

> (harddrive, memory, cpu... etc) and why this happends.

>

> All our client computers are connected to the server with very fast

> gigabyte

> NIC's, and transfering large files from clients to computer is amazingly

> fast

> - still, general performance is horrible.

>

> Norton Antivirus is also an insane system resource hog and completely

> disables the computer to be efficiently used for the 20-30 minutes it

> takes

> to scan (which is does twice a week). If my employers would let me, Id

> switch

> it for working AV software in the blink of an eye. :P

>

> Thanks in advance.

I have 100 MHz computers that logon in 5 seconds. There are many factors

(number of clients logging in at once, load on DC's, roaming profiles, virus

scan at startup), but I would suspect problems with DNS. Troubleshoot DNS

and fix errors.

--

Richard Mueller

Microsoft MVP Scripting and ADSI

Hilltop Lab - http://www.rlmueller.net

--

August 15, 2007

Re: Why is comain connected clients slower than local "single" clients

I had a client have this issue once. I discovered that they had been using

this little Linksys Router for all of their dhcp and dns, while still

logging into their domain. I placed the dhcp and dns roles on the DC

server, disabled them from the router and Viola! super quick login speed.

Definatley check your dhcp and dns setup.

Coraleigh Miller