We have started having issues with wired workstations and wireless laptops not seeing GPO changes or software installation GPOs unless they are rebooted multiple times (more than twice) and laptops booting to the login prompt before the network is connected and then the user getting "no domain controller could be contacted" errors unless they wait several seconds and try again.
The workstations and laptops used to connect to wired and wireless networks very quickly and now they do not connect after reboots unless we add always wait for network and add other artificial delays in GPO settings to add additional wait times.
This workaround makes the reboot experience very painful while the users wait for "applying computer settings" to complete, but if we don't enable those settings, the network is not available when the login prompt is displayed and software that is supposed to be installed during startup doesn't get installed.
I think it could be a network issue and not a workstation issue. Are there settings on network switches that we should have our networking people configure a certain way to optimize for quick connections when computers are started or restarted so we don't have to configure an extra 60 seconds or more wait time on the workstation side during reboots?