I am managing a network for a College of IT. The network contains a large number (500+) public lab computers that we want configured the same way. All of the workstations are running Windows 7 Enterprise and are managed with SCCM 07. In addition, all of the workstations are logging in automatically with a generic student account (I know that is bad, but it isn't my fault :) ). The profile is nothing more than a copy of the default Windows 7 profile that has been made mandatory. All of the customization (theme, screen saver, etc.) of the profile is performed by Group Policy. Currently, we are using a Group Policy combined with a mandatory roaming profile to ensure consistency between all of the workstations. On the whole, this is working perfectly. However, we are running into issues on some of the workstations where the profile is extremely slow to load (60+ seconds) or we receive a User Profile Service service error and the profile doesn't load at all. I'm not certain that the two problems are necessarily related, but they are both causing us headaches. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can increase performance or eliminate the errors that we’re getting with our current configuration? I’m open to all ideas.

Dennis, In event viewer, check the Group Policy operational log. If you go through the informational events it will list how long (in milliseconds) each group policy extension item is taking to load. This may help you narrow down your problem.

Thanks for the tip. I will look into it when I get back in the office on Tuesday.