Cannot join pc's to new domain :( - Solved :)

I'm in the process of trying to join our admin pc's to a new dc as the old server is on its last legs. I had already joined a couple last week with no problems but now I am finding that they cannot logon to the new domain and when I try and add any of the remaining 4 machines I get a message saying that the domain controller for the domain could not be contacted. If I browse the network I can see the new domain and I can see the dc and its shares but if I try and ping it all it does is time out. However I can ping any station on the network from that server. I am really starting to pull my hair out as I cannot see anything wrong with the server itself though I know there must be something.

DNS?

What is your DNS server?

Is it a new domain you've created or just a new domain controller in your existing domain because your subject title and message content contradict each other.

What are the settings for DNS on your new domain controller?

Ben

We have at present 2 domains. 1 admin and 1 curriculum. I have just brought in 1 new server for the admin domain as the existing server is shot and all the AD and DNS settings are completely screwed on it. What I was going to do was build the new server up and migrate the users off the old system and rejoin their machines to the new domain which is something I have done serveral times in the past and never had this problem.

As plexer says - check DNS settings

So are you creating a new Admin domain and moving the users or are you just adding a new server to the existing domain and promoting it to a DC?

Sorry - I can't work it out from you previous posts.

I have had a look at the dns and everything seems ok but there is a possiblity that the county support people did something when they did the sims data transfer.

Is there a simple way of reinstalling the dns onto the new server without stripping out the active directory if I need to go down that route?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by alan-d

So are you creating a new Admin domain and moving the users or are you just adding a new server to the existing domain and promoting it to a DC?

Sorry - I can't work it out from you previous posts.

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I am creating a new domain as the existing admin domain is completely screwed. I would have liked to have got rid of the admin domain and just made it part of the curriculum system but the head would not allow it :(

If the new domain you are trying to join a pc to had no working dns server in it then you are not going to get very far.

Ben

The dns was working correctly as I had already joined a couple of pc's to the new domain.

sorry to ask the obvious but do you have enough IP addresses in your range?

If you can't ping the new dc in the new domain by its FQDN from an existing new domain pc then you have a dns problem.

Please confirm your dns settings and dns is working on the dc.

Also try netdiag and dcdiag to verify your setup. I'd also suggest ADcheck as well as some tools to help you.

Ben

Well I managed to get things sorted in the end. For some reason the county support people had played around with the DNS on the curriculum server and managed to screw that up. This had the affect of causing any workstation on the network not to see the new admin server properly. I rebuilt the DNS on the curriculum server and all is now fine.