Entering password takes me back to Ctrl Alt Delete screen

[nathpeter]

Hi

I've seen people with similar problems to mine but not quite the same, so apologies if I missed one and this is a repeat.

I have a desktop machine that is connected to my work domain. Most days it works fine, but after the machine has been sitting idle for a couple days and I can't login. I hit Ctrl Alt Delete, then enter my username and password, but then it takes me back to the Ctrl Alt Delete page without any error messages.

I can still access the C drive over the network but I just can't log on. I also tried using Remote Desktop from another machine but had no success.

I think it's hardware related, because I have two identical machines and they are both behaving like this. However, all of the drivers have been updated, including the BIOS, and I've got all the latest Windows updates on there too.

Any advice of what's happening or how to debug this would be appreciated.

Cheers
Nath

 

[richnrockville]

Nathpeter, welcome to the windows 7 forum.

One problem that you might look at is to make sure that it is the domain your logging into and not your local machine. there is a small tic mark where the domain name is listed. Either that or your username/password is not correct. Also, if you have tried a few times with the incorrect password, your userid might be locked out by the administrators of your domain who will have to go into Active Directory and reset your userid.

Rich

 

[nathpeter]

Thanks for the suggestion Rich.

Passwords and domains are correct.

The problem seems to only occur when the machine has sat idle for a couple days. I thought it might have been struggling to get back from sleep so I turn that off, but the problem still persists.

 

[richnrockville]

Nathpeter, one problem with sleep and a network computer is that the ethernet card goes to sleep.

I don't recommend using sleep when a workstation is connected to a domain.

I would make sure that the machine is shut down and then brought back up to make sure that the adapters are setup properly.

Rich

 

[nathpeter]

Thanks Rich, that makes sense.

I'm looking at the network card settings now, can you see any that jumps out that might need changing??

ARP Offload - Enabled
Auto Disable Gigabit - Disable
Energy Efficient Ethernet - Disabled
Flow Control - Enabled
Green Ethernet - Disabled (I changed this, it was set to enabled)
Interrupt Moderation - Enabled
IPv4 Checksum Offload - Rx & Tx Enabled
Jumbo Frame - Disabled
Large Send Offload v2 (IPv4) - Enabled
Large Send Offload v2 (IPv6) - Enabled
Network Address - Not present
NS Offload - Enabled
Priority & VLAN - Enabled
Receive Buffers - 512
Receive Side Scaling - Enabled
Shutdown Wake-On-Lan - Enabled
Speed & Duplex - Auto Negotiate
TCP Checksum Offload (IPv4) - Rx & Tx Enabled
TCP Checksum Offload (IPv6) - Rx & Tx Enabled
Transmit Buffers - 128
UDP Checksum Offload (IPv4) - Rx & Tx Enabled
UDP Checksum Offload (IPv6) - Rx & Tx Enabled
Wake on Magic Packet - Enabled
Wake on PAttern Match - Enabled
WOL & Shutdown Link Speed - 10Mbps First

 

[richnrockville]

I personally would change the network card back to the original settings. making sure that it would not
allow the os to turn the power off when inactive. that is a show stopper when connected to a domain.

Rich

 

[nathpeter]

Thanks Rich,

I've made the changes to stop the network card being turned off. Next thing to do is let it sit for a couple days and see if I can log back in after that.

 

[pricetech]

Any chance you're using roaming profiles ?? Had similar issues here where clients with roaming profiles got dumped back to the Ctrl Alt Del prompt because the profile didn't load.
Something to do with the new switches we added, but haven't had the time to get with the admin who has the keys to those to sort it out.