Users complain of a delay at logon at the process seems to have a long pause displaying "Applying Registry Settings".
This problem occurs if most or all of the following conditions are true:
Multiple clients are simultaneously logging on.
The clients are sharing one large policy file or a few large policy files.
The clients are using low-bandwidth (slow) connections.
The clients have access to few domain controllers.
The clients have slow-link detection turned off for policy downloads, or the Registry.pol file is being retrieved because of an update.
Microsoft notes that this may occur if the client cannot use opportunistic locking when downloading the policy file.
Microsoft offers a hotfix for this issue, review Microsoft KB 319440 Or apply Windows Server 2003 SP2.
This problem was first corrected in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2.