Hi,
We have a few different types of Thin Clients running Windows XP Embedded or Windows 7 Embedded (HP t5730/5740/t510).
All of them have Sophos Endpoint Security and Control installed as virusscanner (no firewall), because they are in fact Windows machines and thus infecteable.
The Thin Clients are not part of our domain and connect to our central Endpoint server to get their AV updates etc.
The HP Write Filter is turned off.
When the Thin Clients are started they auto-logon as User and provide the user with a menu (RES Subscriber) to start a Citrix session (RES Workspace Manager 2012 desktop) on one of our Windows 2008 R2 Terminal Servers.
Lately we've noticed a difference in logon times between those Thin Clients and our regular PC's (which are also protected by Sophos and start their Citrix session in the same way), especially from a cold boot:
Thin Client with Windows Embedded (XP or 7):
- User turns on Thin Client, it boots Windows Embedded and automatically logs on as User.
- Once the RES Subscriber menu is shown the user clicks "Start Desktop" and then has to wait about 1 minute before the logon screen of the Terminal Server is shown and the user can actually log on. ("Start Desktop" launches the ICA Client that connects to a published desktop)
PC with Windows (XP or 7):
- User turns on PC, it boots Windows.
- User logs on to PC and sees the RES Subscriber menu.
- User clicks "Start Desktop" and immediately starts logging on to the Terminal Server (pass-through logon).
When we stop and disable all Sophos services on the Thin Client the waiting after a cold boot is suddenly reduced from 1 minute to 5 seconds! (which is a fair time to launch the ICA Client and connect to a published application)
We've tried this on a few different locations and the result is always the same: the logon process is much faster and even the Citrix session seems to be a lot more stable without Sophos running on the TC. (users that complained about strange slowdowns during work hours now have no problems at all)
For us (the IT dept.) this explains why users were complaining about slow logon times and we couldn't replicate this on our machines (because we only tested by starting a Citrix session with their credentials).
The logon times on remote offices are much longer than in our main office (where the Endpoint server is), so it seems to have something to do with connecting to the Endpoint server after booting. Lines to remote offices are 10/30/100mb fiber.
The Thin Clients have the same AV policy as our regular PC's (On-access on Read and scan for Adware/PUA/Suspicious files)
Their hardware is a little less powerful than a regular PC (the HP t510 Thin Client is our latest model with a dualcore VIA Eden X2 U4200 1Ghz and 2GB 1066 Mhz DDR3 RAM), but should still be sufficient.
Of course we don't want to leave our Thin Clients unprotected, so I was wondering if there might be a setting that causes this behaviour so we can fix it without leaving our TC's unprotected.
Thanks in advance!
Regards,
Jeroen
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