Windows cannot obtain the domain controller name for your computer network.

[Bruce123]

Hi all,

 

I just noticed that on some newer PCs we are getting an error event in the Application log, every time they are turned on, relating to not being able to find a DC and subsquent error events relating to the failure to find/process start-up scripts.

 

Windows cannot obtain the domain controller name for your computer network. (The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted. ). Group Policy processing aborted.

 

The event log shows one error for each start-up script that it fails to run (all of them). Presumably no Computer GPO settings apply either. However, when the user logs on, the user Group Polices and scripts do seem to apply properly.

 

After a bit of research I found this:

 

Cannot connect to domain controller and cannot apply Group Policy with Gigabit Ethernet devices

 

This suggests that the problem is related to the 1Gbit integrated NICs ("Realtek PCI GBE family controller" in our case) fitted to these PCs and the delay/fluctuation in establishing a connection (at 100MBit in our case).

 

The solution in the article is to disable a Windows feature call Media Sense

 

How to disable the Media Sensing feature for TCP/IP in Windows

 

which I am going to investigate.

 

But I wondered if anyone else has encounted this issue (affecting some PCs with 1Gbit NICs/driver), and how they resolved it?

 

Many Thanks,

 

Bruce.

Edited May 14, 2012 by Bruce123

[Bruce123]

Another thing I noticed about these PCs is that they run really slow and after a bit of research I found that Windows Search starts automatically, which really seems to slow them.

 

I created a GPO to stop the Windows Search service and to set it to manual and to remove the shortcut from the Start-up menu for all users of the PC.

 

But since these two settings are Computer settings, I am left wondering whether these will apply to these PCs given the problem above.

 

Basically, what I am wondering is do Computer Settings refresh in the background? (I know User settings do)

 

Many Thanks,

 

Bruce.

[hit]

Had to apply this reg fix to a whole batch of fujitsu's and now it's in our core build. Has done absolutely no harm apart from the login box takes a second or two longer to appear.

[Michael]

The main reason a connection drops from 1Gps to 100Mbps is due to poor quality or damaged cabling. The easiest/quickest way is to dial in to your switch and configure all necessary ports as 10/100 ports. At least this keeps things working and then you can continue investigating and resolving the problem.

[Bruce123]

Thank hit and Michael,

 

I just tried the reg fix to disable Media Sensing and it seemed to resolve this issue on this particular PC, without causing any obvious issues.

 

Hit, is this the same fix that you had to apply to your base image? If so, this would seem to answer my second question, about any side-affects, but from what you said it had very little.

 

The problem is I can't roll out the reg change because there is no way to apply the GP (Catch 22). On the other hand, I don't know if any way to identify this model of PC to target them in the GPO. I guess I probably wouldn't want this to apply to all PCs? May involve going around all this model of PCs and making the change manually.

 

Michael, the switch these PCs connect to is 10/100Mbit.....

 

Thanks,

 

Bruce.

Edited May 14, 2012 by Bruce123

[hit]

I was able to push the change out with Impero to start with to get the failing machines to work. And yes, I applied it to our base image, it does only seem to apply to the Fujitsu machines (but we have a lot of those), but other machines haven't complained.

[mhundley]

Although you dont say what method you are using to deploy your machines the following posts may help you

 

Thoughts of a Primary School Tech: Dell Optiplex 390 fails to apply GPO settings

 

This post above will allow you to create a WMI filter which can be used within an MDT task sequence to either apply or not depending on whether the filter is met

 

I have outlined how to do this here. You will however need to adjust the task sequence step from an application installation to a command line to adjust the registry entry.