Diving into the

Windows Logon Process

Yoni Avital (VDI Geek)

Eugene Kalayev (Cloud and PowerShell Geek)

Agenda• Logon process overview

• Logon process breakdown

• Tools of the trade

• Event log (is your friend)

• Process Monitor

• Advanced (Geek) stuff

• Event Tracing for Windows

• PowerShell Scripts

• Live demo

Logon Process Overview

Session Initialization Authentication User Profile

Group Policy UserInit Shell

Logon Process - Optional Phases

• Network Providers (RDS)

• Mpnotify.exe loads network providers (e.g. pnsso)

• 3rd party profile solutions (e.g. UPM)

• UPM loads before the User Profile Service and can delay the logon process

• Group Policy Scripts

• Will affect logon duration if runs synchronously

• Citrix Printer Mapping

• Can delay the logon process if apps are waiting for printer mapping. Handled by

wfshell.exe (part of the UserInit phase)

Session Initialization

Session Initialization

Authentication

Authentication

User Profile

Group Policy

Userinit (Pre-Shell)

Shell

Advanced (Geek) stuff

• Event Tracing for Windows

• PowerShell Scripts

Event Tracing for Windows

• High speed kernel & user mode event tracing

• Steps

• Create and start new ETW trace

• Reproduce the slow logon issue

• Stop the trace

• Convert the ETL log file to XML format

• Analyze log with Notepad ++

• Example – Analyze logon processes

Event Tracing for Windows

Event Tracing for Windows

Event Tracing for Windows

PowerShell – Analyze Logon Duration

Get-LogonPhaseTime -Username UserName –UserDomain Domain -CUDesktopLoadTime $args[1]

User name: cuupmLogon Time: 09:46:37 PM Logon Duration: 107 seconds

Logon Phase Duration (s) Start Time End Time Interim Delay----------- ------------ ---------- -------- -------------Network Providers 1.0 09:46:37.1 09:46:38.1 Citrix Profile Mgmt 82.3 09:46:42.0 09:48:04.2 3.815 User Profile 0.9 09:48:04.2 09:48:05.1 0 Group Policy 9.7 09:48:05.1 09:48:14.8 0.005 GP Scripts (sync) 2.4 09:48:16.2 09:48:18.6 1.398 Pre-Shell (Userinit) 2.3 09:48:18.6 09:48:20.9 0.04 Shell 3 09:48:20.9 09:48:23.9 0

PowerShell - Analyzing GP CSE Load Times

Get-GPUserCSE -Username MyDomain\MyUser

Lists every loaded CSE by name and processing time

CSE Name Time (in ms)-------- ------------Group Policy Environment 1514Registry 4477Group Policy Drive Maps 936Scripts 421Group Policy Registry 1825Folder Redirection 6895Group Policy Files 2418Group Policy Start Menu Settings 842Citrix Group Policy 1310

Total time of 20.64 secondsTotal errors: 1Folder Redirection failed with 'ErrorCode' 1003

Live Demo

• Slow logon – Group Policy

• Slow Logon – Citrix UPM

Links• Xperf -

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askpfeplat/archive/2012/06/09/slow-boot-slow-logon-sbsl-a-tool-called-xperf-and-links-you-need-to-read.aspx

• Windows Logon and Authentication -https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn169016(v=ws.10).aspx

• Analyze Logon Duration PowerShell script - TBS• Analyze CSE load time PowerShell script -

http://www.controlup.com/logon-gpo-analysis-via-powershell/

• ETW - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2593157