\\<DOMAIN NAME>\netlogon folder not found pre-login for windows branding

[chrisjako]

We brand our windows 7 client login screen with some custom made background however since changing the GPO from copying the file from domain names ie. \\domain.local\netlogon\xxxxx its stopped working

 

if we do it from \\dc01\netlogon\xxxx (of domain controller) it works however I want the machine to pikup the info from the first available domain controller

 

is there something stopped the clients from picking up the domain.local url prelogin?

[Arcath]

How are you branding with a GPO? I have our background in netlogon and I deploy it with GPP to set the registry and copy the file into the right place.

[Phrygian]

When you say you're using domain.local, you mean you're using 'DOMAIN'.local i.e. your domain name?

[Michael]

I'd double check DNS is configured correctly on both or more of your DCs.

 

If you try just \\DOMAIN\NETLOGON does this work?

 

When using \\DOMAIN.local\NETLOGON for example, it is vital DNS is working correctly.

[chrisjako]

our domain is baeda.local and yes DNS works fine, really stumped! Am moving the files over to our file server and running them from there instead which is not what I wanted as it means its a singular location and therefore not correctly sharing the load for this file

[Michael]

On your servers, (network configuration) DNS should be pointing to itself first, then anything else secondary. Exclude any external DNS IPs, as these should be specified in DNS Server under Forwarders.

 

In both your Forward and Reverse lookup zones (per server), make sure Zone Transfers are allowed to any server, or a specified list. By default this won't be enabled and is the root cause of a lot of DNS related issues. It prevents crucial DNS information replicating.

[chrisjako]

Hi Michael, sorry for late reply but yes you where right - reverse DNS and Zone transfers where not setup properly on our first two DC's - they have been recently upgraded to 2012 and I must've thought this should have been migrated over so overlooked checking it

 

The issue was still not resolved but I'm now going down another path, we have 2 sites on our network with 4 DC's - when I modified the GP for this image to appear I did it at site 2, looking at the GP on site 1 DC which is the site we are having an issue with I can see it still had the same old location, so I checked the event logs for DFS replication and sure enough every night at 10pm (when backups kick in) we get a event ID 2213, so I did the Microsoft fix in article Changes that are not replicated to a downstream server are lost on the upstream server after an automatic recovery process occurs in a DFS Replication environment in Windows Server 2008 R2 and replication started working and as of last night the warning didn't appear - just waiting to see for the next few days now if our ugly blue standard windows 7 login background is replaced by our school branded one

 

thanks again for your advice and help

[Michael]

You're welcome, no problem at all. Glad it's sorted

[themightymrp]

In both your Forward and Reverse lookup zones (per server), make sure Zone Transfers are allowed to any server, or a specified list. By default this won't be enabled and is the root cause of a lot of DNS related issues. It prevents crucial DNS information replicating.

 

Do you know, I've never come across this before! We don't have any DNS issues I am aware of but I have enabled the zone transfers as you say - lets see if things run any different