Please Wait at user logon - Windows 7 VDI

[mbelchamber]

We have a Windows 7 desktop running in View 5.2. On user logon, after the “preparing your desktop” message we are experiencing a black screen with a grey “Please Wait” box which can sit there for anything up to 1 minute. This is a significant chunk of our logon time.

I have found various references to this in other environments (links below) but we are not using any 3rd party tools (Appsense/Zendesk etc.) – purely a windows build configured by group policy. This is affecting both our 32bit and 64bit images, and we have tried a fresh build of the golden image. We have also tried removing all applied group policies and still get the issue. We think it is at the point where it applies windows themes – but even with no theme set it still has the issue. I even tried disabling the themes service, but this had no effect.

Other instances of this issue are all the same symptom, but in slightly different environments:

Please Wait splash screen slows down logon in vMware View environment

https://liquidwarelabs.zendesk.com/entries/89275403-Please-Wait-splash-screen-slows-down-logon-in-vM...

Windows 7 VDI - Please Wait grey box

http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/465924-windows-7-vdi-please-wait-grey-box

Slow login / Theme change

http://discussions.citrix.com/topic/355261-slow-login-theme-change/

Any ideas on resolving this?

[Amievil]

Hi,

Are you using persona manager or something to remote profile?

Can you describe better you pool?

Julio

[mbelchamber]

Hi Julio,
we are not using any persona management software. We have an environment configured using group policy. We have no roaming profiles, we use folder redirection for saving the user configuration. However, this issue occurs with both folder redirected and users with no config at all.

The pool is configured as linked clone with floating users. The images are resfreshed after each session which we have found gives a more consistent user experience.

Regards, Mark.

[kgsivan]

You have mentioned that the 1 minute delay every time user connects. And the desktops are set to refresh after each log-off

What about desktops are log-off reconnected *without* being refreshed? Could you please try this?

Newly Provisioned (or even refreshed) desktops will definitely take extra time, because it need to create the user profile configuration and prepare the desktop.

Such delay will depend on the performance of the VM and Storage IOPS.

[mbelchamber]

Logon time is around 45-50 seconds. This "Please Wait" screen adds upto an extra minute on top of this. The annoying thing is that it is inconsistent - sometimes it doesn't appear at all and the user is logged on in under 1 minute.

If we stop the refresh process a second logon to the same machine is about 15-20 seconds. However the likelyhood of a person getting the same machine each time is slim. We are a 24x7 organisation so having a dedicated machine for each user would roughly triple the number of VDIs required.

I have spoken to VMware support for their input, and they suggested using msconfig to disable all the non-MS services. It still happens, so that points to something in the OS itself.

[Amievil]

think you have a problem in your profile redirection. Like kgsivan said, the users need to recreate the profile after every refresh.

Can you configure the pool with persona manager?

Julio

[mbelchamber]

We are aware it is an issue with something during or immediately after the profile creation on the machine. The issue is the same for users who are folder redirected or those (such as myself) who have no roaming/redirected profile at all.

We have a verbose logon and it goes through (this list is from our Sept 2014 documentation so may have been tweaked slightly since then but you get the general idea):

Welcome
Please wait for the User Profile Service…
Applying user settings…
Applying Registry policy…
Applying Folder Redirection policy…
Applying Scripts policy…
Applying Internet Explorer Zonemapping policy…
Applying Group Policy Drive Maps policy…
Applying Group Policy Files policy…
Applying Internet Explorer Branding policy…
Applying your personal settings…
Applying Group Policy Registry policy…
Applying Group Policy Shortcuts policy…
Applying Group Policy Internet Settings policy…
Applying Group Policy Regional Options policy…
Preparing your desktop…
Up to here it takes 45-50 seconds.

And then after the "Preparing your desktop" we get the black screen with the "Please Wait" message on it. As you can see it is after all of the profile has been set up on the machine, and it doesn't happen every time.

[PLGeneva]

Dear all, I have exactly the same problem but I'm using windows  as VDI OS.

anybody have an idea about how to speed up the user profile creation process ?

first login about 1min20, second login with vdi not refreshed about 20sec.

but the goal is to have a fresh desktop at each login.

Thank you

Regards.

[dwigz]

If you are not going to use Persona management, have you looked at creating a network profile.  The login delays are due to the default profile being built at every logon to a new system.  The two solutions are building a persona management solution or network profiles.