XenDesktop 7.15 Windows 10 "preparing Windows"

[Baumgartner AG]

Hey Folks

 

I have a XenDesktop Delivery Group running with Windows 10 installed. We use UPM. 

 

I was not satisfied with login times, so I enabled "detailed logon information" on those machines, because there was only "welcome" displayed at the logon. 

 

After enabling detailed logon, it shows me "preparing Windows" for about 1:30 minutes, no more details. Director shows a total login time of about 100 seconds. counting the detailed logon times together gives me like 35 seconds, but I don't what takes so long for the missing minute which is not listed in director... 

 

 

Any help on this?

 

Best regards, Cedy 

[Damian Baldry]

Have you done the optimisation stuff?

 

https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX216252

 

don't mess with this setting though:

 

Device Association Service

 

[Baumgartner AG]

Hi Damian

 

Thanks for the advice. 

 

Most of the very important settings are set via GPO on the machines. I don't even know if Windows 10 is able to show really detailed logon informations (like user profile service, GPOs etc.).

 

I just can't localize what it does in the 1 minute which is missing in director logon informations...

 

 

Regards, Cedy

[Fabian Schmitt]

Hi Cedy,

 

"Preparing Windows" usually takes longer when creating a new user profile, applying updates or other configurations from policies or scripts.

I'm assuming this issue occurs even after subsequential logins and the upm profile isn't created after each login? 

 

Also keep in mind, that director logon time measurement isn't very reliable and should be optimized for getting a more precise result (take a look at this article https://xenappblog.com/2016/optimize-logon-times/ and apply the registry key)

 

I can also highly recommend the logon analyzer script from Guy Leech: https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2018/10/10/analyze-logon-duration-script-just-got-more-powerful/ and try to get more information what is causing the delay. 

 

If you still can't figure out what's the issue, I'd start with splitting the login process into several small steps. Disable everything (except the upm policy) and measure the login time, then enable one policy/logonscript after another and measure the time taken.

 

Regards,

Fabian

 

 

[Baumgartner AG]

Hi Fabian

 

Thanks for the Informations.

 

That's what I was thinking first... It really looked like it creates a new profile at every login. But this is not the case, since UPM profile is created during the first login, and all the changes from the user profile are applied and synchronized. 

 

I will give the director optimization a try, and also will take a look at the script.

 

Regards, Cedy

[Damian Baldry]

The thing I find is that setting everything by GPO has its merits because it makes life easier but sometimes it can also cause a longer delay. Sometimes it pays to manually set the key settings on the master image itself without getting GPO involved, unless you are planning to re-enable those settings without having to re apply the master image. Generally the settings in that optimisation guide don't need to be re-enabled so just do them on the master image one time only.

 

2 gotchas: Device Association Service (don't disable that or you will experience issues with network printers and other things)

 

Windows update: I am not sure how your environment is but windows update is generally disabled on the master image and only re-enabled when a new update for the master image is being deployed. However another gotcha is that Windows 10 (later versions) will auto re-enable windows update if you have disabled it (I understand why but..). The workaround is to change the log on tab for the windows update service and type .\guest as the user and leave the password field blank. That way when windows 10 tries to re-enable windows update it fails to do so.  This is a workaround for an issue where on every reboot all the clients were trying to re-download and patch a large cumulative update. This caused massive bandwidth and performance issues.

 

I have never used the UPM , only used group policy folder/profile redirection so it might well be the UPM that is causing all your headache.

 

[Tom Murphy1709161007]

On 5/2/2019 at 12:36 PM, Baumgartner AG said:

Hey Folks

 

I have a XenDesktop Delivery Group running with Windows 10 installed. We use UPM. 

 

I was not satisfied with login times, so I enabled "detailed logon information" on those machines, because there was only "welcome" displayed at the logon. 

 

After enabling detailed logon, it shows me "preparing Windows" for about 1:30 minutes, no more details. Director shows a total login time of about 100 seconds. counting the detailed logon times together gives me like 35 seconds, but I don't what takes so long for the missing minute which is not listed in director... 

 

 

Any help on this?

 

Best regards, Cedy 

Hi Cedy,

 

Did you ever get anywhere with this? I am also having the same issue. Thanks

[Baumgartner AG]

On 10/15/2019 at 9:07 PM, Tom Murphy1709161007 said:

Hi Cedy,

 

Did you ever get anywhere with this? I am also having the same issue. Thanks

 

Yeah kind of... xD

 

So it seems like Windows 10 kinda does it's "own thing", which means that in some cases it shows "preparing Windows" and in other cases it shows the detailed login information, like GPO settings, User Profile Service etc... No matter what I set the policy to, it decides on it's own what to show on logon.

 

Now the login time was something different: to check what part of the user profile is causing the long login, I manually copied the profile to a network share. I recognized that in some appdata\roaming folder the copy speed was way to slow. 

 

Found two folders with over 300k of *.json files in it. One Folder was created by AutoCAD 2020 because the User experience program was activated, and the other folder was "Code cache", created by Google Chrome. "Code Cache" folder cannot be redirected with Chrome GPO settings, So I just excluded the folder from profile sync.

 

This increased the logon time from minutes to seconds. Unfortunately, theres no solution from Google yet to exclude all the temp directories from roaming profile, or at least redirect it to local profile.

 

Regards, Cedy