AUInstallAgent takes 600 seconds during domain logon

I have been fighting a problem with a new Windows 8 deployment for over 3 weeks now.

I need to deploy over 700 Windows 8 Pro systems by August 1 for a school corporation and I have been stalled on this one issue.

I am using Windows MDT2012 Update 1 for deployment. The computers I am deploying images to are Lenovo Thinkpad E530C and E531 laptops. I have deployed new images to about 40 laptops in a lab that all have experienced the problem.

The problem presents itself during a domain user logon to a Windows 8 Pro system. After the user types in their domain user name and password, the login process looks normal for the first 30 seconds. Then, instead of displaying the Start screen, the screen goes black for 10 minutes. After the 10 minute delay, the Start screen displays and everything runs normally.

The problem is random. It is not specific to any user account or laptop. Sometimes a user can log into a laptop with no problem and then the same user can log into the same laptop and get the 10 minute delay.

I opened a case with Microsoft Product Support on 7/15 but so far, that has gotten me no where. They gathered a ton of logs but did not give me any analysis. They examined my Group Policies and spent an hour on one of the systems that experienced the 10 minute delay during the login I started so I could get them set up with a remote session. So far, no solution.

I did some research of my own and came across the Windows Performance Toolkit in the Windows 8 SDK.
I ended up putting the Windows Performance Toolkit on 8 of the laptops I am testing. That toolkit has the Windows Performance Recorder (WPR), which is the replacement for XPERF, and Windows Performance Analyzer (WPA). Part of WPR is the XBootMgr.exe, which allows me to record activities during the boot process. On each computer, I ran the command;

xbootmgr.exe -Trace Boot

This caused the laptop to reboot and start recording the boot and login process to the *.etl file.
After the laptop finally got to the desktop, ran the Windows Performance Analyzer and loaded the *.etl file that xbootmgr had generated.

I expanded System Activity-->Windows Logon-->Notification: StartShell-->SessionID2-->Subscriber:AUInstallAgent and could see that the AUInstallAgent was taking 600 seconds
In systems that did not present the delay, the AUInstallAgent took less than a second to complete.

If I do a Search for AUInstallAgent in the Windows 8 search, I get nothing.

I looked in the local Windows services on one of the laptops I am testing and I find "Windows All-User Install Agent" is a service with a Service name of AUInstallAgent. I has a manual startup type. In the description, it says "Install AppX Packages for all users" and the path to executable is;

c:\windows\system32\svchost.exe -k LocalSystemNetworkRestricted

After some web searching, I have learned that the AUInstallAgent has to do with the install of Start Screen/Metro Apps (AppX) and I found several posts saying that the service would not start and was preventing updates from the Windows store, but nothing about it causing slow domain logins.

Do you have any idea why this service seems to randomly hang for 600 seconds during a domain user logon?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Dave

I do not have any experience with your situation, but it appears the information you are getting about the boot process is very basic. Did Microsoft suggest you run a utility called Process Monitor, which can be set to monitor the boot and create a log?

If not, I would go to the SysInternals site and download and run it. There are tutorials on how to set it up, but you can set it to monitor the boot sequence. In your situation, it will probably show something being done over and over, or time gaps where nothing is being done.

I am sure a Domain setup is different from normal user setup, but your might try disabling the service you mention (AllUserInstallAgent) for testing. It is disabled in a non-domain type install, or at least it is in 8.1

Sorry I can't help more.

Edit: I forgot to mention, just in case it might be relevant, that update KB2821895 made some fairly serious changes. You might want to check out the info page in the link. At the bottom it does state you will want to run DISM.exe prior to deployments.

A servicing stack update is available for Windows RT and Windows 8: June 2013