BDC won't get onto the domain???

[OhCluelessinNTland]

We have a BDC that won't get onto the network. It says no domain controller can be located for this domain. However it works fine as a PDC under it's own domain. The network in question has had numerous broken trust's. My question is what's going on with this domain? Is the PDC having a problem or is this normal for NT 4.0 SP 4?

Thanks,

CWS

 

[RichardMoran]

What do you mean by "However, it works fine as a PDC under it's own domain"?

It sounds like you're saying that you have had it running as a PDC on one domain, and now you are trying to have it running as a BDC for another domain. Are you saying that you have demoted it to a BDC, and are now trying to join another domain?

Unless I've gone mad ( which is quite possible ), I thought that if you wanted to move PDC's or BDC's from one domain to another, you had to re-install them from scratch. ( This is due to various unique identifiers, and the SAM database )

If you can supply a little more information, it will be easier to advise you.

Rik

 

[OhCluelessinNTland]

Exactly, it was rebuilt as after a SP 6 upgrade failed. We reformated the drives and it would not come back on the network as a BDC. So we rebuilt it from scratch again as a PDC of a unused domain name to see if it could at least see the network etc. It did that fine!

SO the bottem line is a BDC rebuilt from scratch isn't going back on the domain. The network roo's deleted and readded the name back to the domain to see if that would help, it didn't. The only way it can get on the domain is if you use DHCP to resolve an IP address, then change the IP back to the original IP it is supposed to have and reboot again! Any idea's of what the deal is here?

 

[jahlmer]

Here's my 2 cents: Try a different NIC. If for some reason the PDC is thinking that the mac address is for a different network, maybe it won't work?!? Or, is there a computer account on the domain for the BDC? if so, remove it and add it again. Hope it helps.

 

[RichardMoran]

My first thoughts are along the lines of jahlmer. I would consider the NIC to be suspect, and would probably try another. I would check out a few more things first though before swapping it.

I would ensure that the computer account had been removed from the PDC, prior to re-installation of the BDC.

Are you saying that you use DHCP to assign the BDC an IP address? If so, have you tried manually assigning an address outside the scope. ( or excluded from the scope ) Does that make any difference?

Also, do you have any client reservations set up in DHCP? Maybe, that could be causing a problem. You may have to remove the reservation, and add it back in.

My guess would be that it is a configuration issue, as opposed to a NIC problem, as you said that it worked fine as a PDC.

Hope this helps.

Rik

 

[OhCluelessinNTland]

Nope the Nic is fine, or it wouldn't have allowed a reload as a BDC of a new domain. The interesting thing is the problem went away after 3 days!

CWS