Problem logging onto domain. Stumped.

I've got three servers in VMware. They all used to log onto the domain fine, but for some reason I'm having trouble now. My DC is powered up and everything's fine there it seems. If I try to log on using one particular VM server, it says it can't contact the domain controller or none is available. If I try to log on from the other VM server, it works fine. So it has to be an issue with this particular server. If I just log on to the server locally, I can ping the DC, I can see it, I can even change the name of the computer in the domain to the point where it says the system needs to restart for the changes to take effect. So you'd figure that when it rebooted it'd be able to log on to the DC since it just registered itself on it. No such luck, still can't log onto the domain. I have no idea what's up. Any help or suggestions would be great. Thanks!

(all my vms are using bridged ethernet on a single segment)

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Comments

dynamik

Be sure your DNS is setup right. You can't log on to the domain if you can't find the DC (which you need DNS to do). It will likely point to your DC in this case, but if you've configured a separate DNS server, you would have to point it to that.

JayrodEF

yeah, DNS was my first thought. I checked all the settings on both the DC and that server. After flushing DNS, pinging provided FQDN, so it wasn't resolved by broadcast. Double checked my zones, everything looked good. Don't know why it was doing it. I ended up just joinging the server to a workgroup, rebooting, then rejoining the domain and rebooting and that worked. I had previously reset the account in AD, but that hadn't worked either. Don't really get it, but I guess a fix is a fix.

techster79

I had a similar problem and fixed it by resetting the domain account password.

Magnum2544

I almost guarantee your problem is in your VMWare Ethernet Adapter settings. You probably either have them on different VMNets, or some are bridged and some are NAT and some are Host Only. I use VMWare on a daily basis at college and the best practice is to use VMNets as it puts the virtual machines on their own network.

dynamik

He wouldn't have been able to ping the machine or disjoin/rejoin the domain if he was having network problems.

It sounds like there was a problem with the computer account. ADUC doesn't reset computer accounts correctly (even though it appears to offer that functionality). Disjoining/rejoining a domain is sometimes the easiest solution.

You cannot change the machine account password by using the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in, but you can reset the password by using the Netdom.exe tool. The Netdom.exe tool is included in the Windows Support Tools.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325850