I sent out some Tweets recently regarding knocking around 66% off the first logon time of a Windows 10 machine. Whilst people are not overly concerned about the actual first logon time (as long as the subsequent ones are speedy enough), there are environments where users will quite often be exposed to “first logons”. As an example, we have in current engagement a selection of “open access” machines, where due to their very nature, local copies of profiles are not maintained. This in essence means that every time a user logs on, they are experiencing the long and drawn-out “first logon” process.
There are various ways you can mitigate against this which I’ve been exploring for some period of time. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that as Windows 10 is under the flag of “continuous development” – build 14295 just released has some interesting changes, such as the presence of App-V logs, indicating that the client will soon be natively available – any tricks and tips I’ve put together here may not necessarily work in the same way once newer builds make it to general release. For now, though, I’ve had success with them, and headed off some of the user dissatisfaction from the long logon times in open access areas.
We also studied the logon process using Lakeside SysTrack, and found that the biggest cause of slowdowns and alerts on our Windows 10 deployments was due to huge disk I/O, normally around the logon period but also within the user session itself. From this we’ve extrapolated the conclusion that Windows 10 is optimized for SSDs, and if possible, you should deploy it on systems where the OS drive is solid state. This tallies with what I’ve been hearing, that Microsoft based their operating system development around three large customers from the US who have been using SSDs as standard for four or five years now.
Anyway, I actually documented my conclusions on an article over at 4SysOps. You can read the article via the link below – there’s also a link to my YouTube video demonstrating my findings, if you can understand my north-eastern accent 🙂
Improving Windows 10 logon time – https://4sysops.com/archives/improving-windows-10-logon-time/
Video demonstration – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxXDOHDrnZ8
I will also be doing a presentation on all things Windows 10 at BriForum London this year.
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