I installed the standard edition of Windows Server 2008, creating the domain mydomain.local
My Vista Ultimate workstations joined the domain without any problem.
However, I cannot get the XP Pro SP3 workstations to join.
When entering the domain as mydomain.local, the following message is displayed. It seems to me that the ‘everything’ was found.
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DNS was successfully queried for the service location (SRV) resource record used to locate a domain controller for domain mydomain.local:
The query was for the SRV record for _ldap._tcp.dc._msdcs.mydomain.local
The following domain controllers were identified by the query:
myserver2.mydomain.local
Common causes of this error include:
– Host (A) records that map the name of the domain controller to its IP addresses are missing or contain incorrect addresses.
– Domain controllers registered in DNS are not connected to the network or are not running.
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On a chance, I entered the domain as mydomain {leaving off the .local}. This asked me for the user/password with permissions to join the domain, but after entering the info for a domain admin the following was displayed.
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RPC Server is unavailable.
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The RPC services on both the server and workstation are running.
These are the items I verified or tried:
1. Workstation and server can ping each other using either the IP address or FQDN.
2. Server TCP/IP settings only show its own IP address as the DNS server, no ISP DNS servers.
3. Workstation TCP/IP DNS settings point to the server’s IP address. I tried both the default and enabled NetBios settings.
4. Workstation account is created and enabled on the server.
5. ipconfig /all shows
correct DNS server IP
correct DNS suffix search list
correct connection-specific DNS suffix
5. I displayed the workstation’s DNS with: ipconfig /displaydns The FQDN of the server is listed.
6. I flushed the DNS cachewith :ipconfig /flushdns
7. I re-registered the workstation’s DNS name with: ipconfig /registerdns
8. The workstation’s firewall (AVG) does not seem to be blocking anytthing.
I did NOT start the WINS service on the server, nor does the workstation have a WINS server setting in its TCP/IP properties because I thought WINS was un-necessary with XP and/or Vista.
Is WINS the answer, or am I missing some other step?
