Thin Clients vs Win XP / PE

[Marcus Cotey]

We have several users using thin clients to connect to Win 2003 Terminal
Services.
We also have several users using WinXP and MSTSC to connect.
We even have a few that use Win PE2.0 and MSTSC to connect to the TermServ
farm.

The WinXP and the WinPE clients have keyboard delays when connecting. The
thin clients do not. What would cause this delay?

Before someone suggests this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324446
I have already read it. We cannot enable those advance features on our RAID
array (Thanks Dell) and so that is not an option. How would I even test for
that anyway? I mean, if that really is the issue I could probably lobby to
get the Term Servers on different hardware but until I can prove
unequivocally it won't happen.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.

MC

 

[Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]]

Re: Thin Clients vs Win XP / PE

Do you mean that the keyboard responsiveness lags for all users when one of
the affected clients connects (per the KB article you mentioned), or that
there is a lag for the affected client only?

Can you describe exactly what you mean by "keyboard delay"? Slow response,
dropped keystrokes, something else?

--
Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]
SDE - Terminal Services


"Marcus Cotey" <MarcusCotey@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:E535A079-0A8E-4479-9397-762F17E23753@microsoft.com...
> We have several users using thin clients to connect to Win 2003 Terminal
> Services.
> We also have several users using WinXP and MSTSC to connect.
> We even have a few that use Win PE2.0 and MSTSC to connect to the TermServ
> farm.
>
> The WinXP and the WinPE clients have keyboard delays when connecting. The
> thin clients do not. What would cause this delay?
>
> Before someone suggests this article:
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324446
> I have already read it. We cannot enable those advance features on our
> RAID
> array (Thanks Dell) and so that is not an option. How would I even test
> for
> that anyway? I mean, if that really is the issue I could probably lobby
> to
> get the Term Servers on different hardware but until I can prove
> unequivocally it won't happen.
>
> Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.
>
> MC

 

[Richard Thompson]

Re: Thin Clients vs Win XP / PE

I had a similar problem some time back. In my instance it turned out to be a
faulty route back from the site we were working on to the datacenter.
Traffic was sent via a 10mb link and came back via a 2mb link and this just
was not sufficient for all the users to work at the same time which caused
the problem.

We identified this by performing a number of trace routes and then getting
our ISP to analyze the data.

Cheers
Rt

"Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]" <joshrose@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:BAA3A49C-1714-4673-A934-AC087603EA01@microsoft.com...
> Do you mean that the keyboard responsiveness lags for all users when one
> of the affected clients connects (per the KB article you mentioned), or
> that there is a lag for the affected client only?
>
> Can you describe exactly what you mean by "keyboard delay"? Slow
> response, dropped keystrokes, something else?
>
> --
> Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]
> SDE - Terminal Services
>
>
> "Marcus Cotey" <MarcusCotey@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:E535A079-0A8E-4479-9397-762F17E23753@microsoft.com...
>> We have several users using thin clients to connect to Win 2003 Terminal
>> Services.
>> We also have several users using WinXP and MSTSC to connect.
>> We even have a few that use Win PE2.0 and MSTSC to connect to the
>> TermServ
>> farm.
>>
>> The WinXP and the WinPE clients have keyboard delays when connecting.
>> The
>> thin clients do not. What would cause this delay?
>>
>> Before someone suggests this article:
>> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324446
>> I have already read it. We cannot enable those advance features on our
>> RAID
>> array (Thanks Dell) and so that is not an option. How would I even test
>> for
>> that anyway? I mean, if that really is the issue I could probably lobby
>> to
>> get the Term Servers on different hardware but until I can prove
>> unequivocally it won't happen.
>>
>> Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.
>>
>> MC
>

 

[Marcus Cotey]

Re: Thin Clients vs Win XP / PE

Well all users experience some lag occasionally but for one user it is
particularly painfull. As for what I mean by delay it is pretty much all of
the above...keystrokes seem to buffer and take a second to display on the
screen, dropped key strokes, cursor sometimes jumps fields and about once or
twice a day the delay becomes longer than a few seconds (we timed one up to
45 seconds) and the user becomes completely frustrated.

So far we only have 15 users on our TermServ farm and the intention was to
roll this out to a couple of 100 users but unless we can improve upon the
experience the project may stall out. Thanks for the responses.

PS
I got with out Network Engineering group and we checked the ports on the
switch and their were no errors, no dropped packets and no collisions.
Everything from the switch to the wire to the port was five by five.

"Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]" wrote:

> Do you mean that the keyboard responsiveness lags for all users when one of
> the affected clients connects (per the KB article you mentioned), or that
> there is a lag for the affected client only?
>
> Can you describe exactly what you mean by "keyboard delay"? Slow response,
> dropped keystrokes, something else?
>
> --
> Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]
> SDE - Terminal Services
>
>
> "Marcus Cotey" <MarcusCotey@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:E535A079-0A8E-4479-9397-762F17E23753@microsoft.com...
> > We have several users using thin clients to connect to Win 2003 Terminal
> > Services.
> > We also have several users using WinXP and MSTSC to connect.
> > We even have a few that use Win PE2.0 and MSTSC to connect to the TermServ
> > farm.
> >
> > The WinXP and the WinPE clients have keyboard delays when connecting. The
> > thin clients do not. What would cause this delay?
> >
> > Before someone suggests this article:
> > http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324446
> > I have already read it. We cannot enable those advance features on our
> > RAID
> > array (Thanks Dell) and so that is not an option. How would I even test
> > for
> > that anyway? I mean, if that really is the issue I could probably lobby
> > to
> > get the Term Servers on different hardware but until I can prove
> > unequivocally it won't happen.
> >
> > Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.
> >
> > MC
>

 

[Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]]

Re: Thin Clients vs Win XP / PE

Only one user has the big problems? And I'm guessing he is always using the
same client machine? You might want to run diagnostics on his machine,
rather than the intermediate switches; any number of things could be causing
him problems, from a bad Ethernet/wireless card, to malware infestation, to
just running so many apps locally that his computer is performance choked.
Connecting a different computer to the same Ethernet cable might help you
rule out a networking problem unique to his machine.

--
Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]
SDE - Terminal Services


"Marcus Cotey" <MarcusCotey@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:5879DFA0-12D3-4C21-B85E-0D2FE3CB8F4F@microsoft.com...
> Well all users experience some lag occasionally but for one user it is
> particularly painfull. As for what I mean by delay it is pretty much all
> of
> the above...keystrokes seem to buffer and take a second to display on the
> screen, dropped key strokes, cursor sometimes jumps fields and about once
> or
> twice a day the delay becomes longer than a few seconds (we timed one up
> to
> 45 seconds) and the user becomes completely frustrated.
>
> So far we only have 15 users on our TermServ farm and the intention was to
> roll this out to a couple of 100 users but unless we can improve upon the
> experience the project may stall out. Thanks for the responses.
>
> PS
> I got with out Network Engineering group and we checked the ports on the
> switch and their were no errors, no dropped packets and no collisions.
> Everything from the switch to the wire to the port was five by five.
>
> "Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]" wrote:
>
>> Do you mean that the keyboard responsiveness lags for all users when one
>> of
>> the affected clients connects (per the KB article you mentioned), or that
>> there is a lag for the affected client only?
>>
>> Can you describe exactly what you mean by "keyboard delay"? Slow
>> response,
>> dropped keystrokes, something else?
>>
>> --
>> Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]
>> SDE - Terminal Services
>>
>>
>> "Marcus Cotey" <MarcusCotey@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:E535A079-0A8E-4479-9397-762F17E23753@microsoft.com...
>> > We have several users using thin clients to connect to Win 2003
>> > Terminal
>> > Services.
>> > We also have several users using WinXP and MSTSC to connect.
>> > We even have a few that use Win PE2.0 and MSTSC to connect to the
>> > TermServ
>> > farm.
>> >
>> > The WinXP and the WinPE clients have keyboard delays when connecting.
>> > The
>> > thin clients do not. What would cause this delay?
>> >
>> > Before someone suggests this article:
>> > http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324446
>> > I have already read it. We cannot enable those advance features on our
>> > RAID
>> > array (Thanks Dell) and so that is not an option. How would I even
>> > test
>> > for
>> > that anyway? I mean, if that really is the issue I could probably
>> > lobby
>> > to
>> > get the Term Servers on different hardware but until I can prove
>> > unequivocally it won't happen.
>> >
>> > Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.
>> >
>> > MC
>>

 

[Marcus Cotey]

Re: Thin Clients vs Win XP / PE

Well lets, for the moment, forget about my one user...and lets discuss this
from a general perspective. Say the KB article is not the issue...but we are
experiencing on all our clients a keyboard lag (buffering) to some degree or
another. What would cause that? Forgot about all the other symptoms and
just think of this from the user perspective that the keyboard input seems
slow, say once or twice an hour and sometimes the slowness is short in
duration (couple of secs) to almost a full minute.

What would your thoughts on that be? The Term Servers themselves are pretty
darn beefy (the slowest one has a quad processor with 8GBs of RAM) so I can't
imagine it is a hardware issue. Switch logs are clean so it doesn't look
like a network issue.

"Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]" wrote:

> Only one user has the big problems? And I'm guessing he is always using the
> same client machine? You might want to run diagnostics on his machine,
> rather than the intermediate switches; any number of things could be causing
> him problems, from a bad Ethernet/wireless card, to malware infestation, to
> just running so many apps locally that his computer is performance choked.
> Connecting a different computer to the same Ethernet cable might help you
> rule out a networking problem unique to his machine.
>
> --
> Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]
> SDE - Terminal Services
>
>
> "Marcus Cotey" <MarcusCotey@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:5879DFA0-12D3-4C21-B85E-0D2FE3CB8F4F@microsoft.com...
> > Well all users experience some lag occasionally but for one user it is
> > particularly painfull. As for what I mean by delay it is pretty much all
> > of
> > the above...keystrokes seem to buffer and take a second to display on the
> > screen, dropped key strokes, cursor sometimes jumps fields and about once
> > or
> > twice a day the delay becomes longer than a few seconds (we timed one up
> > to
> > 45 seconds) and the user becomes completely frustrated.
> >
> > So far we only have 15 users on our TermServ farm and the intention was to
> > roll this out to a couple of 100 users but unless we can improve upon the
> > experience the project may stall out. Thanks for the responses.
> >
> > PS
> > I got with out Network Engineering group and we checked the ports on the
> > switch and their were no errors, no dropped packets and no collisions.
> > Everything from the switch to the wire to the port was five by five.
> >
> > "Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]" wrote:
> >
> >> Do you mean that the keyboard responsiveness lags for all users when one
> >> of
> >> the affected clients connects (per the KB article you mentioned), or that
> >> there is a lag for the affected client only?
> >>
> >> Can you describe exactly what you mean by "keyboard delay"? Slow
> >> response,
> >> dropped keystrokes, something else?
> >>
> >> --
> >> Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]
> >> SDE - Terminal Services
> >>
> >>
> >> "Marcus Cotey" <MarcusCotey@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> >> news:E535A079-0A8E-4479-9397-762F17E23753@microsoft.com...
> >> > We have several users using thin clients to connect to Win 2003
> >> > Terminal
> >> > Services.
> >> > We also have several users using WinXP and MSTSC to connect.
> >> > We even have a few that use Win PE2.0 and MSTSC to connect to the
> >> > TermServ
> >> > farm.
> >> >
> >> > The WinXP and the WinPE clients have keyboard delays when connecting.
> >> > The
> >> > thin clients do not. What would cause this delay?
> >> >
> >> > Before someone suggests this article:
> >> > http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324446
> >> > I have already read it. We cannot enable those advance features on our
> >> > RAID
> >> > array (Thanks Dell) and so that is not an option. How would I even
> >> > test
> >> > for
> >> > that anyway? I mean, if that really is the issue I could probably
> >> > lobby
> >> > to
> >> > get the Term Servers on different hardware but until I can prove
> >> > unequivocally it won't happen.
> >> >
> >> > Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.
> >> >
> >> > MC
> >>
>
>

 

[Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]]

Re: Thin Clients vs Win XP / PE

Usually, I would suspect CPU or network load spikes, particularly when the
lag is only a few seconds. For example, if even a few users have IE7 open
with Flash enabled, that will *kill* a connection. Blocking Flash via GP or
a reg key, or making it opt-in with a third party plug-in would help a great
deal. Another example would be playing back movie files, transferring an
enormous file via drive redirection, or running "dir /s" from the root of a
drive in the command prompt.

While TS makes some effort to balance session resource allocation, it
doesn't operate well at full capacity.

--
Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]
SDE - Terminal Services


"Marcus Cotey" <MarcusCotey@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B3D72E64-1AE9-499A-BFC7-C21E5AEDB777@microsoft.com...
> Well lets, for the moment, forget about my one user...and lets discuss
> this
> from a general perspective. Say the KB article is not the issue...but we
> are
> experiencing on all our clients a keyboard lag (buffering) to some degree
> or
> another. What would cause that? Forgot about all the other symptoms and
> just think of this from the user perspective that the keyboard input seems
> slow, say once or twice an hour and sometimes the slowness is short in
> duration (couple of secs) to almost a full minute.
>
> What would your thoughts on that be? The Term Servers themselves are
> pretty
> darn beefy (the slowest one has a quad processor with 8GBs of RAM) so I
> can't
> imagine it is a hardware issue. Switch logs are clean so it doesn't look
> like a network issue.
>
> "Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]" wrote:
>
>> Only one user has the big problems? And I'm guessing he is always using
>> the
>> same client machine? You might want to run diagnostics on his machine,
>> rather than the intermediate switches; any number of things could be
>> causing
>> him problems, from a bad Ethernet/wireless card, to malware infestation,
>> to
>> just running so many apps locally that his computer is performance
>> choked.
>> Connecting a different computer to the same Ethernet cable might help you
>> rule out a networking problem unique to his machine.
>>
>> --
>> Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]
>> SDE - Terminal Services
>>
>>
>> "Marcus Cotey" <MarcusCotey@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:5879DFA0-12D3-4C21-B85E-0D2FE3CB8F4F@microsoft.com...
>> > Well all users experience some lag occasionally but for one user it is
>> > particularly painfull. As for what I mean by delay it is pretty much
>> > all
>> > of
>> > the above...keystrokes seem to buffer and take a second to display on
>> > the
>> > screen, dropped key strokes, cursor sometimes jumps fields and about
>> > once
>> > or
>> > twice a day the delay becomes longer than a few seconds (we timed one
>> > up
>> > to
>> > 45 seconds) and the user becomes completely frustrated.
>> >
>> > So far we only have 15 users on our TermServ farm and the intention was
>> > to
>> > roll this out to a couple of 100 users but unless we can improve upon
>> > the
>> > experience the project may stall out. Thanks for the responses.
>> >
>> > PS
>> > I got with out Network Engineering group and we checked the ports on
>> > the
>> > switch and their were no errors, no dropped packets and no collisions.
>> > Everything from the switch to the wire to the port was five by five.
>> >
>> > "Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]" wrote:
>> >
>> >> Do you mean that the keyboard responsiveness lags for all users when
>> >> one
>> >> of
>> >> the affected clients connects (per the KB article you mentioned), or
>> >> that
>> >> there is a lag for the affected client only?
>> >>
>> >> Can you describe exactly what you mean by "keyboard delay"? Slow
>> >> response,
>> >> dropped keystrokes, something else?
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Josh Rosenberg [MSFT]
>> >> SDE - Terminal Services
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> "Marcus Cotey" <MarcusCotey@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
>> >> message
>> >> news:E535A079-0A8E-4479-9397-762F17E23753@microsoft.com...
>> >> > We have several users using thin clients to connect to Win 2003
>> >> > Terminal
>> >> > Services.
>> >> > We also have several users using WinXP and MSTSC to connect.
>> >> > We even have a few that use Win PE2.0 and MSTSC to connect to the
>> >> > TermServ
>> >> > farm.
>> >> >
>> >> > The WinXP and the WinPE clients have keyboard delays when
>> >> > connecting.
>> >> > The
>> >> > thin clients do not. What would cause this delay?
>> >> >
>> >> > Before someone suggests this article:
>> >> > http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324446
>> >> > I have already read it. We cannot enable those advance features on
>> >> > our
>> >> > RAID
>> >> > array (Thanks Dell) and so that is not an option. How would I even
>> >> > test
>> >> > for
>> >> > that anyway? I mean, if that really is the issue I could probably
>> >> > lobby
>> >> > to
>> >> > get the Term Servers on different hardware but until I can prove
>> >> > unequivocally it won't happen.
>> >> >
>> >> > Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.
>> >> >
>> >> > MC
>> >>
>>
>>

 

[TP]

Re: Thin Clients vs Win XP / PE

Hi Marcus,

Let me start out by saying that the symptoms you describe have
almost always been caused by network issues in my experience.
The above is based on a server that is not overloaded or having
problems due to hardware or driver issues. Of course your
situation could be one of the unusual cases.

You have mentioned that your switch logs are clean--that is a
plus. How about more low-tech troubleshooting like continuous
pings? Pick a few of the most troublesome workstations and run
a continuous ping to the TS. When the users notice a delay, have
them look at the pings. They should see an endless stream of
replies with time<1ms (or whatever is normal for your LAN), even
when the delay is 45 seconds like you mentioned. Teach them
how to use Ctrl-Break every so often to view statistics and verify
that no packets were lost.

When the users experience a delay have them press Ctrl-Alt-End.
Does the Windows Security dialog come up immediately or is
there a long delay?

One key thing I noticed is that based on the information you have
provided your problem seems to be more user and/or workstation
specific. I say this based upon your description that all users
experience some lag occasionally but for one it is particularly painful.
What is different about this one user? Do they run different software,
have different printers, etc.? About how much lag do all users
experience? How often is occasionally?

When you run perfmon on the TS what do the numbers look like
when a problem occurs? For example, CPU utilization, Commit
charge total, Pages/sec, Avg Disk Queue Length? Are you seeing
missing data points?

What Write Policy do you have set on your Virtual Disk? If you
have a PERC card with battery backup then I would recommend
setting it to Write-Back. Check in Server Administrator (newer
server) or Array Manager Console (older server). What settings
do you have on the Policies tab of the Properties of your PERC
card? Have you contacted Dell Server Support and asked them
to verify that you have configured the controller and array for the
best performance, and that you have the latest firmware and drivers?

There are certain cases where delays or pauses may occur. For
example, tranferring a large file (or clipboard data) from the client
to the TS, situations where the shell is waiting for an operation to
complete, problems with printer autocreation or printer drivers, etc.

What are you running for the server OS? 2003 x64 Standard R2 SP2?

What software is loaded on your TS servers? Which programs do
the users typically have problems with? All programs?

Thanks.

-TP

Marcus Cotey wrote:
> Well lets, for the moment, forget about my one user...and lets
> discuss this from a general perspective. Say the KB article is not
> the issue...but we are experiencing on all our clients a keyboard lag
> (buffering) to some degree or another. What would cause that?
> Forgot about all the other symptoms and just think of this from the
> user perspective that the keyboard input seems slow, say once or
> twice an hour and sometimes the slowness is short in duration (couple
> of secs) to almost a full minute.
>
> What would your thoughts on that be? The Term Servers themselves are
> pretty darn beefy (the slowest one has a quad processor with 8GBs of
> RAM) so I can't imagine it is a hardware issue. Switch logs are
> clean so it doesn't look like a network issue.

 

[Doug Dwyer]

Re: Thin Clients vs Win XP / PE

I just had this issue with a win98 machine with 32 mb ram and the TS sessions
was usable until the user printed something to the local redirected printer.
The mouse would jump and everything would lag. I replaced the the PC with a
current Win xp machine and the same thing does not occur.

Check out the specs of the computer! The TS client may work but if you
expect the pc to do more than just the screen, mouse and keyboard
redirections you will need more computer.

"TP" wrote:

> Hi Marcus,
>
> Let me start out by saying that the symptoms you describe have
> almost always been caused by network issues in my experience.
> The above is based on a server that is not overloaded or having
> problems due to hardware or driver issues. Of course your
> situation could be one of the unusual cases.
>
> You have mentioned that your switch logs are clean--that is a
> plus. How about more low-tech troubleshooting like continuous
> pings? Pick a few of the most troublesome workstations and run
> a continuous ping to the TS. When the users notice a delay, have
> them look at the pings. They should see an endless stream of
> replies with time<1ms (or whatever is normal for your LAN), even
> when the delay is 45 seconds like you mentioned. Teach them
> how to use Ctrl-Break every so often to view statistics and verify
> that no packets were lost.
>
> When the users experience a delay have them press Ctrl-Alt-End.
> Does the Windows Security dialog come up immediately or is
> there a long delay?
>
> One key thing I noticed is that based on the information you have
> provided your problem seems to be more user and/or workstation
> specific. I say this based upon your description that all users
> experience some lag occasionally but for one it is particularly painful.
> What is different about this one user? Do they run different software,
> have different printers, etc.? About how much lag do all users
> experience? How often is occasionally?
>
> When you run perfmon on the TS what do the numbers look like
> when a problem occurs? For example, CPU utilization, Commit
> charge total, Pages/sec, Avg Disk Queue Length? Are you seeing
> missing data points?
>
> What Write Policy do you have set on your Virtual Disk? If you
> have a PERC card with battery backup then I would recommend
> setting it to Write-Back. Check in Server Administrator (newer
> server) or Array Manager Console (older server). What settings
> do you have on the Policies tab of the Properties of your PERC
> card? Have you contacted Dell Server Support and asked them
> to verify that you have configured the controller and array for the
> best performance, and that you have the latest firmware and drivers?
>
> There are certain cases where delays or pauses may occur. For
> example, tranferring a large file (or clipboard data) from the client
> to the TS, situations where the shell is waiting for an operation to
> complete, problems with printer autocreation or printer drivers, etc.
>
> What are you running for the server OS? 2003 x64 Standard R2 SP2?
>
> What software is loaded on your TS servers? Which programs do
> the users typically have problems with? All programs?
>
> Thanks.
>
> -TP
>
> Marcus Cotey wrote:
> > Well lets, for the moment, forget about my one user...and lets
> > discuss this from a general perspective. Say the KB article is not
> > the issue...but we are experiencing on all our clients a keyboard lag
> > (buffering) to some degree or another. What would cause that?
> > Forgot about all the other symptoms and just think of this from the
> > user perspective that the keyboard input seems slow, say once or
> > twice an hour and sometimes the slowness is short in duration (couple
> > of secs) to almost a full minute.
> >
> > What would your thoughts on that be? The Term Servers themselves are
> > pretty darn beefy (the slowest one has a quad processor with 8GBs of
> > RAM) so I can't imagine it is a hardware issue. Switch logs are
> > clean so it doesn't look like a network issue.
>