Information Tech Blog

There have been reports from certain schools that domain-joined student laptops experience long delays--six to 10 minutes or more--on startup. This article explains what is behind these delays, and what can be done to remedy the problem.

The principal difference between "domain joined" and "non-domain joined" computers is that the former are managed computers, whereas the latter are unmanaged. It is the fact that the affected student computers are managed -- not that they are domain joined -- that is the cause of the startup delays. The reason is that a managed computer in our environment is configured to do at least two things that an unmanaged computer is not: (1) download antivirus ("malware") updates, and perform malware scans; and (2) download Windows updates, and apply them. Both of these operations are extremely important in a large enterprise network such as FUSD's. Without performing the necessary updates and scans, computers will become riddled with malware which can degrade network performance across entire campuses, or even the District as a whole.

Before the era of mini-notes, desktop computers could be left on at night, set to enter "sleep mode" at night, or could be "awakened" over the network using a Wake-On-LAN signal sent from a server. In each case, the computers would be able to download updates and apply them, or perform antivirus scans, during off-peak hours. As a result, when students wanted to use these computers, they were already "primed" and ready to go.

With the mini-notes, there are two problems:

(1) The usage pattern in the classroom is completely different than it was with traditional PCs. In a computer lab environment, computers would typically be left on, and students would go to the lab to use computers that were already running. In today's mini-note computers-in-the-classroom environment, teachers tend to keep the laptops locked up in computer carts or cabinets until just before the students want to use them; and they are either configured to "power off" when the laptop lid is down, or else the teacher manually powers the laptops off before stowing them overnight.

(2) Mini notes lack "Wake-On-LAN" technology that could be used to wake them up at night for updates and antivirus scans, and they are also mostly wireless networked, which compounds the problem further--because wireless wake-on-LAN is still very rare.

The result of these two problems is that when a teacher takes the mini-notes out of storage and hands them to the students, with the expectation that students can just "turn them on and go", the computers are just beginning their update and scan sequences, and are sluggish to start up because CPU loads are high. This is to be expected, because managed computers need to perform updates and antivirus scans. Because the computers are shut down and stowed at the end of class, there is never a long-enough window of time during which the computers are both "awake" and "idle" for them to perform the necessary updates. Even if the Windows configuration is set to delay updates and scans so that they don't happen immediately on power up, there will still be a problem: if the machines are shut down before updates can be applied later on, Windows will eventually still schedule scans and updates for the next power up cycle, regardless of whether there should be a startup delay or not.

There are at least two solutions to this problem. First, teachers can be advised to either turn the computers fully on an hour before students arrive, or leave them on overnight or over the weekend. This can be done right now, and doing so would eliminate the startup problems. However, this solution consumes power unnecessarily.

Alternatively, I.T. can configure mini-notes NOT to power off when the lids are closed, but instead to go into "sleep" mode. As long as the mini-notes are being charged overnight, this poses no real problem, because they will charge fully whether they are in sleep mode or fully powered off. However, because there is no wake-on-LAN feature on either the HP 2133 or the ASUS Eeepc mini notes, they also will need to have "scheduled tasks" defined that will wake up the machines during off peak hours so that they can run updates and scans and then "go back to sleep". Some desktop PC's have "timers" in the BIOS that allow wakeups to occur at scheduled times, but alas, the mini-notes lack this feature as well. However, we have tested "wake the computer from sleep to perform this task" settings in Windows Scheduled Tasks, and fortunately, this does enable a mini-note to wake up from sleep mode.

Why didn't we do this initially? Well, setting power features was not possible through Active Directory Group Policy ("G.P."), until very recently. The reason is that it is considered a Windows "Preference", which was not formerly addressable through G.P. As a consequence, these settings would have had to be configured by hand. However, with Windows XP Service Pack 3, there is a now a tool called 'Group Policy Extensions' that allows the setting of "preferences" which were previously unreachable through group policy--including the behavior of the power buttons and lid settings. We have quietly been "pushing" this Group Policy Extensions update out via Windows Updates for several months, so the vast majority of mini-notes should be able to be controlled by it. It also required Server 2008 Active Directory services, which we deployed a few months ago.

The plan, therefore is as follows:

1.) Using Group Policy Extensions, force the mini-notes to enter sleep mode on lid closures or power button pushes (but "push and hold" will still force the power completely off.)

2.) Using standard Group Policy, push out a scheduled task that causes mini-notes to "wake up" randomly during a window of time each night.

3.) Once awakened, force the computer to perform windows updates, malware updates, and malware scans.

4.) When complete, send the computers "back to sleep."

With this change, the problem of computers being "unresponsive" right when students want to open them up and start using them will be a thing of the past. Furthermore, having the computers resume from "sleep" instead of booting into Windows from a cold start will dramatically speed up the start time. Both of these fixes will contribute to a much more positive classroom experience for both teachers and students.