Unable to join domain from Win 2000 and XP machines

[btupman]

We have an NT domain spanning a WAN link (using shiva VPN Boxes) and I just finished installing two new laptops (a toshiba satelite pro te2000 and a te2100) one with XP and one with 2000. Whenever I attempt to get them to join the domain I get prompted for credentials with permissions to join and after I enter them I get the error message:

'The following error occurred attempting to join the domain "Domain_name": the specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted.'

about a week earlier I had no problems joining an almost identicle set of machines to the domain without a problem. I am able to ping all relevant PDCs and BDCs, and when I do so the addresses are resolved through DNS (ie they resolve to bdc.domain.com).

I am stumped, any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[wlpsyp]

Can you add/join the computers in question to the PDC or BDC from the PDC side then try it or is that out of the question

 

[jeroenw1]

I ran into this once, when adding a machine with a complex machine-name. Yo ucould try it using an extremely short and simple machine-name.

good luck

 

[sajesh]

check these links...

http://www.jsifaq.com/SUBG/TIP3300/rh3338.htm

http://www.jsifaq.com/SUBE/tip2300/rh2345.htm

 

[pctech2003]

In order to join the domain you first need to leave the dns server ip #'s blank on the machines you want to join to the domain.

 

[btupman]

Hi everyone, thankyou all for your speedy replies. I attempted all of the above with no success, I even tried using the netdom.exe utility to get the machines on from the command line but still unable to contact the domain.

The interesting thing is that when you attempt the join it manages to still prompt you for credentials in order to join but then comes unstuck. So there are some communications, just don't know what goes wrong after that.

 

[cjhacon]

Do you have virus protection installed on the new pcs?

I had a similar problem. Once I disabled the virus software at start up I was able to connect to the domain.

 

[btupman]

I managed to get them onto the domain by manually adding our WINS server address to the clients, and then putting in dummy(invalid) DNS address as well. This forced them to use WINS to resolve names and got them onto the Domain.

Its only a workaround not a solution and means there's still something wrong with DNS here but at least I can set up new machines now.

Thank you all again for your responses.