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.