Windows 10 AD domain client slow network init, shares not accessible right after logon

active-directorynetwork-sharenetworkingwindows 10

On an HP Slimline Desktop – 290-p0016ns (5QR69EA) running Windows 10 Pro in a business environment I have user folders such as desktop, documents, etc on a SMB share of a remote file server running Windows 2012 R2.

Each time a user logs in at cold boot, the desktop background is loaded and then a message states that the remote fileserver is not accessible.

Waiting a few seconds and right-click/refresh on desktop shows all files. Also a reboot fix it most of the times. Not always.

This is an awful behavior I would like to get rid of.

My tries:

  1. Installed last BIOS and drivers from HP
  2. Disabled NIC power save features
  3. Regarding Layer 1, I've manually set the NIC 1.0 GBPS Full Duplex
    (also tried 100Mbit and 10Mbit for troubleshooting purposes, same
    behavior)
  4. Disabled the fast boot option in powercfg.cpl
  5. Even if this is the only problematic PC in the network, I've tried
    to set static IP and disabled IPV6 to ensure no delay was due to
    DHCP as suggested here on SuperUser
  6. I uninstalled Kaspersky Internet Security cause I didn't find a way to delay its startup.
  7. I've found this post on Technet but I don't have such property in the advanced tab of my NIC drivers "Receive side scaling", as suggested by MSFT Arthur_Li
  8. I found I'm able to ping IPs but can't resolve hostname in the first seconds after boot, so I added a line with ip and fileserver name in %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Since none of this worked I'm actually out of troubleshooting paths. Any hints?

This issue happens 100% of the times at cold boot.
Around 30% of the times at warm boot (reboot).

Might be even stranger: it never happens at wakeup from sleep states.

It happens only to this PC, at each network port in the office.

I also connected it right on the Cisco SG300 switch with a known good patch cord to ensure the issue was not cables-related.

Best Answer

I was able to workaround this issue this way:

  • I forgot to mention that this is the only Windows 10 client (all the rest is still 7)

  • I made a mistake at point 1, the driver was still the old one. I updated it, and I was able to set the option described at point 7, but it still didn't fixed.

  • I decided to try another W10 client in this domain, so I connected a VM running on my laptop as domain client and mapped a user's folders. Tadaaaa: same issue as on the physical client.

I quickly figured out what the VM and the physical client had in common and that was missing in the rest of the network: windows 10 network discovery feature! I disabled on both the VM and the physical client and they both are not showing this symptom anymore.

I also reverted all settings modified at points 2, 4, 5, 6.

The options 3 and 7, and the hosts file line with IP and hostname of the file server described at question's point 8 seems to be needed as well as network discovery shutdown for the client to work instantly after logon with the file server.

Please note that I'll leave the question open now that I know this is an environment issue with Windows 10 clients, in the hope someone comes out with a real solution.

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