Vista - Long log in times

Hello all~
I have several Vista business 32bit laptops,of various makes and models, but all have the same problem. They are joined to a w2k3r2 domain, and whenever the users take them home and are not connected to the domain, they are unable to login. They can get to the welcome screen and put in their domain username and password but it will sit forever at the welcome screen with the circle spinning. I have clocked it up to an hour before shutting it down. As soon as they come in the next day and are plugged into our network they have no problems. However I have found that if I log in as the local administrator, let everything come up, I can log off and log back in with my cached domain user account. i did check to see if the user profiles were actually created ahead of time and they are. I am stumped and it is to the point where I am ready to downgrade to xp on these machines as work is being lost. Help!

Ideas? Anyone?

Does it happen if the domain users try to log on in safe mode?

How about [safe mode + net]? Different behaviour?

Is anything at all being logged to the event logs during this logon delay period?

This problem is going to be "environmental" in the sense that you've got something on that SOE image or in those user profiles which is interfering with the logon.

I will try logging in under safemode and safemode +net and report back what happens.

Logging in under safemode + Networking worked first try. I checked the error logs, but I don't see anything that sticks out of the ordinary. I do use group policy heavily on our domain, but nothing goofy. Although I do deploy our printers using group policy...

Also just rebooted in normal mode, while still not connected to the domain and everything came up normal. The only thing that comes to mind is that it is searching for the domain to verify the credentials, before it loads the cached profile, but does not time out? does that sound right?

Have you installed any network monitoring software, Remote control softwares like dameware, goverlan etc. or firewall client in the clients?

Not sure what you mean. How is this "not connected to the domain" different to your first post when logon doesn't work?

Authentication attempts do time out. It's certainly searching for something, but it's not as simple as a never-ending attempt to find a DC. Those routines soon give up, unless they're being hampered in some way.

No nothing like that.

I meant that after I successfully logged in with my domain user account in safemode(while not connected to the domain), I rebooted and started the laptop up normally and logged in fine with my domain user account,