I have some questions about an already answered post. Please see below. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpronetworking/thread/4572e2b3-d6f2-46eb-9f34-60fe29a68f86 Hi, Our windows 7 Professional 32bit machines are slow to logon to the domain but are ok when we log in locally. When logging into the domain it pauses as the Welcome screen for about 30seconds. Shutdown also seems to go from the log off screen quickly but then pauses on the shutdown screen for about 20seconds. A new profile does not seem to help nor does disabling all non microsoft things on startup and our desktop background is set to a picture. NB: XP Professional logs in quickly to the same domain. What do we need to do to fix this? I am having this same issue with Windows 7 32-bit and in the past with Windows Vista. When logging in with a domain account it takes approximately 45 seconds. Logging in with a local account takes less than 10 seconds. I have group policy loop-back processing enabled in replace mode, so the same policy should be applied to the local accounts as the domain accounts. I don't believe that group policy is my culprit. I noticed in the event logs that it is taking roughly 30 seconds for the network connection to come online. The fix mentioned above may work for users who have cached credentials on the system but what about users logging in for the first time? In past experiences when enabling this setting, new users would have to wait thirty seconds to a minute for the network connection to come up before they could log in. If they tried before the network came up, they would get something like "network connection unavailable" or "domain unavailable". So my question is, why does the network connection take so long to come up? Is Windows trying to determine which network I am connected to in order to classify it with a location profile (i.e work, domain, public)? How do I get that to stop? Any help would be greatly appreciated. :)

Here are the steps from the other post. "Hi, Please also try the following steps. 1. Go to Start, type Group Policy in the Search Box and then click Edit group policy. 2. Expand the following item from the left pane: Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Logon 3. Double click "Always wait for network at computer startup and logon" setting on the right pane, choose Disable and then click OK. Exit Group Policy Editor and check the result. If the issue persists, I suggest you perform a Clean Boot for a test. Thanks, Novak"

Hi, Thanks for posting in Technet. The following article has the compare of local logon and domain logon. How Interactive Logon Works Logon and Authentication Although it is for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 systems, you can still know the difference between the two logins. Domain logon needs communication with DC to process validation. Therefore you need to confirm whether the 30 seconds is the time for waiting for network connection or waiting for validation via network. Does the issue occur before or after a user logs on? You can try to temporary disable antivirus and firewall as these are the possible reasons that cause the slow network connection establish issue. Additionally, please update the network adapter driver for client computers, make sure that Windows 7 compatible drivers are installed. Generally in Windows 7 the network adapter driver will be loaded when the startup finishes before a user logs on. However a incompatible network adapter driver may not be loaded until any user logs on the system. Arthur Xie TechNet Subscriber Support in forum If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Thanks for the info. Is there anything specific that I should look for in the event logs to determine a compatibility issue with the NIC driver? I have a Broadcom NetXtreme and downloaded the latest drivers from Broadcom.

I have seen this same issue off and on with windows 7. There are no errors in the logs, but what I do see is a ton of entries about how this this windows 7 license is valid. This message appears over and over and over during the long login time. We use KMS for activation, but I am not sure if this is an activation message - either way its not an error, but it does seem to correlate to the long login times. -Dan

Did you download the driver from the following website? Broadcom.com - Ethernet NIC NetXtreme Desktop Driver Downloads Important Note: Microsoft provides third-party contact information to help you find technical support. This contact information may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this third-party contact information. If Windows 7 compatible driver is installed there should not be any network problems. Generally, when a user first log on to domain, the authentication needs to be processed with domain server. Usually 45 seconds is a normal time consuming. At least same behavior occurs in our domains. If the user logs on with cached credential then, the log on time will be shorter. If you would like to track the log on process, you may pay attention to the event ID 100 logs in “Application and Service logs/Microsoft/Windows/Diagnostics-Performance/Operational” in Event Viewer. Also you can audit account. Audit Account Logon EventsPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.