No logon servers available

[AaronL]

We are in the process of switching our workstations to a new domain and I have recently encountered a strange error.

 

Two Windows 7 machines which are connected via wifi have been giving me an error "There are currently no logon servers available to service the logon request." at the Windows login screen. Any user which has not previously logged into this machine seems to encounter the error. Users that have logged in on the workstation before are fine. When these users log in, I notice that the computer is not automatically connected to the wireless network, but rather connects a few seconds after start up.

 

What I imagine is happening is that the users who have logged in before are getting in via cached credentials and then are being authenticated and connected to the network. The users who haven't been logged in before aren't able to log in because the machine is not yet connected to the network while on the login screen.

 

The network is using WPA2-Enterprise and the users are being authenticated via User/Computer Authentication by being a member of the "Domain" and "Wireless" AD groups. I have checked to make sure all of these users and computers have the proper AD membership.

 

Any ideas why the computer isn't being connected to the network at the login screen so new users can log in?

[pcstru]

I'm not sure yet what the actual cause is, but deleting the computer from AD and then rejoining the machine to the domain seems to be a cure.

[ADMaster]

I have similar issues; I tweaked a few settings this week so we will see how they work. Here are the ones to check,

 

 

Always wait for network before logon, this will have the computer wait for the network before it lets you log on.

Setup your wireless via gpo I think this is under computer settings windows security.

Setup your wireless to use computer authentication only and forget the user authentication. I say this because if you are troubleshooting and have to login as local admin you cannot connect because you are not authenticated to AD.

 

 

The policy I changed this week was start up policy processing wait time under system/group policy. It tells group policy how long to wait for a network connection.

I will have to wait and see how this change works in my environment, but before I made this change a gpupdate /force would fix the problem.

Of course I am trying to get to the root cause so I don’t have to do that.

[apeo]

Check to see if the laptop is failing computer authorisation on the WLAN, if that is the reason why then its probably related to the machine password age i.e. machine password had changed on the client but failed to update AD because it failed joining WLAN due authentication failure with the new password.

 

Have a look here:

 

Machine Account Password Process - Ask the Directory Services Team - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

Password Age for Machine Accounts do not expire - Action plans and problem solving - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

[TheCrust]

It might not be related to authentication with your wireless at all - we have a section of our building where the wireless has NO authentication and is completely open.

 

There is a set of 30 laptops in that area, and individual laptops regularly "fall off" the WLAN despite the SSID and connection properties being defined via GPO. If you were to log on to one of the affected laptops as a local user, they still see the SSID and report good signal strength - they just refuse to connect automatically.

 

A manual re-connection usually sorts the problem - for a little while anyway.

 

We have so far tried updated NIC drivers (the cards are all Intel-based), completely new image build from the ground up, even different models of laptops - but they all do it. The only thing that we can say is consistent about the issue is the fact it's Windows 7, and a Cisco AP.

[Meldrew]

There is a set of 30 laptops in that area, and individual laptops regularly "fall off" the WLAN despite the SSID and connection properties being defined via GPO. If you were to log on to one of the affected laptops as a local user, they still see the SSID and report good signal strength - they just refuse to connect automatically.

 

Is there any other SSIDs listed in preferred networks? We had an issue where students were trying to connect to other networks, which meant the SSID we wanted, then didn't connect next time the laptop was used. Eventually we used a GPO to block the other SSIDs from appearing on domained machines.