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HELP HELP

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Kjonnnn

IS-IT--Management
Jul 14, 2000
1,145
US
I hope someone can help with this.

Our network consists of about 100 computers using 95, 98, NT and 2000. We have a PDC and BDC running NT40 Server.

On the PDC, Exchange, WINS and DHCP are also running. The BDC is just a BDC and not running any services
.
We have a domain called “MAIN” and a workgroup called “ALL” that we use. Ninety percent of the users log into the MAIN domain.

Last week we installed a firewall on out our network. We changed all of the IP address and set every computer to use DHCP (whereas pre-firewall, 50% of the computers had manually set IP addresses).

PROBLEM: For some reason, if a person logs off, the PDC wont authenticate them back on to the domain. It will give various messages, “unable to find domain controller” or “MAIN domain is busy”, etc. Now they can still get their email which in on the same server and uses NT authentication.

What’s odd is that on each computer that can’t log in, the Computer Brower, Workstation and Net Logon services will not start.

Now if I take those computers out of the Domain “MAIN” and log them in under the workgroup “ALL” everything works.

I reinstalled the BDC software twice, with the same results. Its recognized as a BDC, but those services wont start, so therefore on the BDC, Server Manager, User for Domains, and Network Neighborhood come up blank.

What on the domain would be shutting those services down? Is there a way to fix this?
 
Wow - there's a lot here that could be going wrong!
Anyway, it sounds like the BDC is the best place to start - under normal circumstances the BDC should be doing all of your user authentication - NOT the PDC. This is a common misconception. If your BDC has an issue - such as not communicating properly with the PDC - it may be that workstations are trying to get authentication from it, but are failing because it isn't working. I'd start by making sure it was up and replicating properly before looking any further...
Let us know more...
 
I think we figured it out.

A user, unbeknownst to us, had installed Windows 2000 Advanced Server on this computer, and was running WINS, DHCP you name it. It become a problem with we put in a firewall and changed the internal IP scope (except on his which we did not know about). We shut him down and everythings seems back to normal.

My boss won't let me take him out back either....

Hummmfph... know it all users.
 
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