The following error occurred attempting to join the domain YourDomain.com: The name limit for the local computer network adapter card was exceeded. The following error occurred attempting to join the domain YourDomain.com: The Requested resource is in use.

I was working on a Windows 2008 R2 Server which had lost its trust relationship with the domain and was not allowing us to logon to it using Domain ID.

Here are the series of checks I performed and the events in chronological order:

• The server was reachable from outside using RDP but failing to authenticate a Domain ID.

• The server was able to resolve internal as well as external names from inside it.

• It was able to reach to the Domain and Domain Controller

• Removed it from domain (added in workgroup) and tried to rejoin it back and got following error even before it could ask for the credentials: “The following error occurred attempting to join the domain YourDomain.com: The name limit for the local computer network adapter card was exceeded.” 

•  Disabled and re-enabled the NIC but that did not resolve the issue so restarted the server.

•  After restarting the server the above error disappeared however just after submitting credentials after putting in the domain name to join it to, I encountered a different error this time: “The following error occurred attempting to join the domain YourDomain.com: The Requested resource is in use.” 

 

•  Deleted the Computer Account from Active Directory but even after that the same error kept appearing while attempting to rejoin the server to domain.

•  Restarted the server again but that too did not help.

         Resolution: Pre-Staged a computer object i.e. created a computer account in AD by the same name which I was trying to join to the domain and tried rejoining again and it worked.

Happy Troubleshooting… :)

Install Windows 10 from USB Drive

How to Install Windows using USB Flash Drive

We are in the era of micro computing where things are getting smaller in size and yet effective be it Mobile Phones/Laptops/Storage Devices etc. We have been seeing significant reduction on their size and dimensions however they are still more effective than they used to be earlier.

In new generation Laptops there are competition in the market to produce as slim/thin/compact laptop as possible which resulted in removal of several I/O Ports and Devices like LPT/Serial Ports, Floppy Disk Drive, CD/DVD Disk Drive etc.

On the Laptops without CD/DVD drive if we need to install fresh operating system (Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2016 etc) then we need to have either External USB CD/DVD drive or a USB Bootable Flash drive with Windows OS image on it.

There are several tools available out there on the Internet which enables us to create Bootable USB Flash drive but thankfully there are no tools needed if we have a system running Windows 7 or above with a CD/DVD image (ISO) to prepare a Bootable USB Flash Drive and here are the instructions:

Things Needed

1 : USB Pen Drive, 4 GB or above.

2 : A System running Windows 7 or above.

3 : Installer CD/DVD Image (Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10)

4 : Virtual ISO Mount tool (get one from here) (Optional**)

Insert USB drive in any of the working USB port on your system running Windows 7 or above.

Open Portable WinCD Emu.exe (Downloaded from above) and mount the ISO image of Windows Installer Disk. remember the drive letter. (ex: D:)

Open Command Prompt as Administrator (CMD Run As Admin).
Diskpart
List Disk
Select disk (x) #Enter the number from above command output for the Flash Drive
Clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32 quick
assign letter=v
exit
xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f v:

The last command will start copying files/folders from the mounted installer disk to USB Flash drive.

Wait for it to complete and once it does, the USB Flash drive will be ready to work as a Windows Installation media.

Boot your target computer and make sure the first boot device is set as USB Drive /USB Removable disks.

Good Luck...

Please post in comments below for any questions or comments you may have.

** While performing the steps on Windows 10 it is not needed as an ISO file can simply be mounted by double clicking the ISO file.

Failing to join a member server to Domain

Failing to join a member server to Domain

I was working on a major incident recently where-in a member server was requested to be joined from domainA.com to domainB.com (this was a multi Domain Forest with 40+ domains.)

The Member server was running on a HP DL series physical machine with Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition installed on it.

When I tried to add the server to the domainB.com by going into the system properties it attempted to locate the DC to join it to and after a minute or so it fails with following error.

"The following error occurred attempting to join the domain "domainB.com.com" The network path was not found.

09/03 16:25:08 -----------------------------------------------------------------
09/03 16:25:08 NetpValidateName: checking to see if 'domainB.com' is valid as type 3 name
09/03 16:25:09 NetpCheckDomainNameIsValid [ Exists ] for 'domainB.com' returned 0x0
09/03 16:25:09 NetpValidateName: name 'domainB.com' is valid for type 3
09/03 16:25:13 -----------------------------------------------------------------
09/03 16:25:13 NetpDoDomainJoin
09/03 16:25:13 NetpMachineValidToJoin: 'MEMBERSERVER'
09/03 16:25:13 NetpGetLsaPrimaryDomain: status: 0x0
09/03 16:25:13 NetpMachineValidToJoin: status: 0x0
09/03 16:25:13 NetpJoinDomain
09/03 16:25:13 Machine: MEMBERSERVER
09/03 16:25:13 Domain: domainB.com
09/03 16:25:13 MachineAccountOU: (NULL)
09/03 16:25:13 Account: domainB\DomainAdmin
09/03 16:25:13 Options: 0x25
09/03 16:25:13 OS Version: 5.2
09/03 16:25:13 Build number: 3790
09/03 16:25:13 ServicePack: Service Pack 1
09/03 16:25:13 NetpValidateName: checking to see if 'domainB.com' is valid as type 3 name
09/03 16:25:13 NetpCheckDomainNameIsValid [ Exists ] for 'domainB.com' returned 0x0
09/03 16:25:13 NetpValidateName: name 'domainB.com' is valid for type 3
09/03 16:25:13 NetpDsGetDcName: trying to find DC in domain 'domainB.com', flags: 0x1020
09/03 16:25:17 NetpDsGetDcName: failed to find a DC in the specified domain: 0x4cf
09/03 16:25:17 NetpDoDomainJoin: status: 0x4cf
09/03 16:25:17 -----------------------------------------------------------------

I tried to ping the domain from the MEMBERSERVER and was getting a successful resolution results and it was able to communicate with the domain via ping or nslookup.

After doing some research it was found that under Network interface card’s properties on the member server Client for Microsoft Networks was found unchecked tried to enable it but when I attempted to do so it gave a message saying  “Are you sure you want to Disable the “Client for Microsoft Networks”“ from the NICs properties? Upon Clicking Yes, the window disappears and when I open the NIC’s property to see if it was enabled it is again showing unchecked (Disabled).

What did not Work

Now I thought that of resetting the winsoc and see if that helps so supplied following commands at command prompt.

Netsh winsoc reset catalog

Netsh int ip reset

A restart of the server was initiated after the above steps, IP Addresses were assigned again since the above commands clears all network related information from the NIC but Even after resetting the winsoc did not help and the Client for Microsoft Networks was still showing unchecked and would not let me enable it.

Just for curiosity tried to join the machine back to the domain domainB.com and as expected it failed again.

What Worked

Being this a Physical server I was left with only one Idea/option in my mind and that was to uninstall the network adapters and do a rescan for hardware changes in the device manager.

Performed NICs uninstallation and did a rescan in device manager, Adapters were detected, IP details were reassigned to them and now the Client for Microsoft Networks option was editable and showing checked already.

Now I attempted to add the server back to domainB.com and Bingo!! It worked.