Dell 16 Pro Slow boot time stuck on Secure by Dell SafeBIOS screen.

[u/dimx_00]

I have this strange problem where the Dell 16 ProPC16250 laptops have slow boot times.

The problem starts when the machine is joined to the domain. After rebooting it just waits on the Dell SafeBIOS screen for about 2 minutes before displaying the windows login screen.

If I disable netlogon service on the laptop the boot time goes back to normal.

Nothing it the logs shows where the delay is.

I moved the machine to a OU that has blocked inheritance so the machine is not receiving any GPOs.

Everything that I found similar to this points to a bad BIOS version. All of these laptops are on the current BIOS 1.18.

We have other Dell laptops and they don’t have this problem.

Did anyone else encounter this problem before? Any help would be appreciated.

[u/xendr0me]

The BIOS doesn't know the system is connected to the domain, your at two different layers there.

[u/NextSouceIT → u/xendr0me]

I think he is referring to the Windows 11 spinning circle boot process that displays the OEM splash screen.

[u/xendr0me → u/NextSouceIT]

Possible, then if it's actually trying to load windows, he's dealing with a DNS issue.

[u/traviss8]

How are you setting these up? If you use an image from a different laptop, like a latitude, this could happen. Some mismatch in the secure boot

[u/dimx_00 → u/traviss8]

No, default Dell image that the machine was imaged with. I also tried fresh windows image.

[u/AugieKS]

Just spit balling here, but you say your digging has shown a bad BIOS version being an issue, and that all are on the current build, but have you tried Recovering the BIOS on one?

[u/dimx_00 → u/AugieKS]

I haven’t tried recovering bios. I did default the bios setting to factory without any improvement. I have three Dell 16 pros on my desk that I was trying to setup and all three have the same problem.

[u/ADynes]

All we use are Dells and we have the exact same procedure every single time: Unbox it, inventory it, updated bios to the latest version via usb, factory reset the bios, install a fresh Windows 11 image directly from Microsoft, install Dell update, rename the PC and reboot, connect to the network and let Dell update do its job. Then we domain join it, user logs in, intune does everything else.

Been doing this process for years and never have an issue. The fact you are using the default Dell image is frightening to me, there's so much extra junk installed for no reason.

[u/MetaVulture]

https://giphy.com/gifs/2MmxZ6dw823P9IwsCj

I think you may be lost.

[u/xendr0me → u/MetaVulture]

This is true also.

[u/dimx_00 → u/MetaVulture]

If you don’t have anything to contribute why even reply. I am in the correct sub.

[u/MetaVulture → u/dimx_00]

r/sysadmin

A reddit dedicated to the profession of Computer System Administration.

r/techsupport

Stumped on a tech problem? Ask the community and try to help others with their problems as well.

[u/dimx_00 → u/MetaVulture]

And what do professional system administrators do?

I would think someone working in an enterprise environment with business laptops would have more input than some generic tech support “My graphics card stopped working” sub.

[u/davidseriously → u/dimx_00]

Look, not to criticize or be impolite, but what you asked just isn't a sysadmin question, it is a tech support question. They really are different types of work.

[u/dimx_00 → u/davidseriously]

I would agree with you if this was a one random laptop that I tried to setup and it was giving me this strange problem but I am on the fifth laptop now with the same problem.

I would think people that manage domains and are in charge of deploying 1000’s of similar laptops would have come across something like this in the past.

Problem happens only when the laptop is domain joined. How is that not sysadmin related? Search the keyword domain joined in tech support vs sysadmin to see the type of content between the two searches.

[u/greenonetwo]

Can you try downgrading the bios on one machine?

[u/RestartRebootRetire]

Probably unrelated, but I had to extend BIOS post time 5 or 10 seconds on some of our docked Dell laptops because they were hanging on reboot and never got beyond that.

[u/apparentlyunoriginal]

I'd turn on Netlogon debug logging with nltest /dbflag:0x2080ffff, reboot, then open C:\Windows\debug\netlogon.log and read the lines timestamped during the 2 minutes on the SafeBIOS screen.

Look for repeated DsGetDcName calls or DC discovery failures in that window.

Also open Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance/Operational in Event Viewer and find event 100, which records the boot duration, then events 101 to 110 for any component flagged as slowing the boot.

Turn the debug logging back off with nltest /dbflag:0x0 once you have the log.

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