Cannot join computer to new domain

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Hi, i have recently set up a new win 2k server, to practice working with active directory (i am studying mcsa at the moment). It connects to the internet through a wireless connection to a d-link adsl wireless modem-router. I have set it up as a domain controller. Now i am trying to add a laptop computer to the domain, which also connects wirelessly through the d-link router, but i get the message cannot find a domain controller. What am i doing wrong?
Any help will be much appreciated. Thanx.

 

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first of all can you ping the domain? are they on the same subnet? AND ip range? i know this could be like duh... but check them..

 

hi,

are you using the router or server to hand out IP addresses?

 

It's going to be a DNS issue. Your domain controller will also have DNS running on it, as Active Directory relies on having a working internal DNS structure.

Your laptop is probably getting a preferred DNS server as your ISPs or the router address. You need to set up DHCP, so that is gives out your internal DNS server as the preferred DNS server and then configure your domain controller's DNS service to forward external DNS requests to your ISP or other Internet DNS servers. This is done in the forwarders tab in the properties of the DNS server.

When you promote a server to be a domain controller SRV (service resource records) are created in DNS that point to domain controllers and other services on your internal network. Your laptop cannot find your domain controller because it is not querying your internal DNS server.

HTH

 

Blue beat me to it
what he said :P

 

Sorry that I deprived the members of reading one of your inimitable posts Ryan

 

yes, i can connect to the server from the laptop, access all shared folders. They have the same ip range, as i dhcp server on the routers assigns them. I'm not sure if this is right, or the server should assign them.

 

well if they start with 169 (the ips) then your dhcp isnt working.. also like the guys have said.. have you got your dns sorted out?

 

First of all thank you all who replyed.
I opened up the router interface and changed the dns server ip address in the 'prefered dns server' option to the ip of the server. The only thing i am not sure about is if i should turn off dhcp on the router and allow the server to hand out ip addresses to the computers.

 

No, the ip's are all 192.168.1.2 and so on, as they are supplied by the router's dhcp server.

 

Depending on the purpose of the server set up I would most likely leave the Router as the DHCP server.

If this is only a lab (as I think it is) then when your server is turned off because you don't feel like using it you would be unable to browse the web if your server was the DHCP server.

 

That is why i left the dhcp on the router on, because i'm not keeping the server on 24 hours, as it's only a lab, like you said.

 

Lab or not, you need to keep your domain controller up and running now because once you successfully configure your DNS, the DNS server on your domain controller will be forwarding external requests to the Internet. Hence if it is off, you won't get Internet access.

 

Internet is fine through the router, but i didn't have the time to try and sort out the dns on the server

 

If you have dns running on your DC, but your workstation is taking its dns setting from your router you will always have problems connecting to your domain. Why? Becuase your workstation is looking to your router for a dns server through the dhcp settings the router is dispersing, and that means that your workstation is looking to your ISP's dns servers for name server resolution. This will never work because your ISP's name servers know nothing about your AD domain, and you want it that way.

Point your workstation to your DC for dns and set the dc to forward dns requests for urls other than your little domain to either your router or your ISP's name servers. Disable all zone transfers and click the check box to secure the cache against pollution.

 

I went to network connections on the workstation i am trying to connect, went to properties, tcp-ip properties and set the ip of the server 192.168.1.12 (which it gets through dhcp from the router) instead of 'obtain dns server address automatically'. Still can't find it.
Something i am doing wrong.
The server gets ip 192.168.1.12 from the dhcp of the router, the workstation has 192.168.1.14.

 

Have you given your DC a static IP address? That's a must.

I think it's a huge mistake to use a router that is not a member of the domain the ability to hand out IP addresses. Why? Because the DC can then never know exactly what the IP address of the workstations are and then DNS can never work correctly.

Although it's not good practice to make a DC a DHCP server in your case its a good thing. That way you can have a domain authorized DHCP server that communicates with the DC setting the IP addresses. You can then set the workstations return their IP information to the dns server. That way the DNS information on the DC will always be correct.

When you set up your DHCP server on your DC you must reserve the IP address that you have given the DC so your DHCP server doesn't try giving out that address to a workstation and you end up having an IP address conflict.

I would recommend that you get the Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit. It explains the fundamentals and exactly how the DNS and DHCP servers will work in Windows 2000. The Resource Kit for XP or Windows 2000 Professional, depending on what OS you have on your workstations, would also be very useful.

It's pretty apparent that you're just shooting blind at setting this up, so go study this out. The resource kits that I've recommended above will help you to understand the concepts as implemented by the MS OS's that you're using, and how, and why, you should configure them correctly.

Even if you get this set up correctly by someone telling you how to do it it's not going to help you for the future. You need to understand these concepts so that you can set up future installations correctly as these are very basic principles and concepts of both networking and MS's Active Directory.

 

Thanx for the prompt answer, I found win2k server resource kit on the microsoft website, there's quite a lot to read, i'll give it a try.
I'm a bit confused with all this,how do i skip the router settings so that the computers see the dc instead of the router? There is a setting in the router interface for 'preferred dns setting' and that's pointing to the isp's dns server, i suppose. But how do i make the workstation see my dc's ip address instead of that one?
Sorry, i know i need to go back to study more, but i would really like to join these workstations to the domain, so i can practice all the other things.

 

Turn the dhcp server in the router off. Then set up the dhcp server on the DC.

 

As long as the clients are W2K or XP, they will register themselves in your domain controllers DNS server, it doesn't matter if they are statically assigned IP addresses or whether they are dynamically assigned by the DHCP service on the domain controller. You do not want an unauthorised DHCP server in your active directory domain. So, as Freddy said, turn that router DHCP off and either create a scope for your clients on your servers DHCP or statically assign all of them. Note, as already said the server must be static.

Actually you should set up exclusion ranges rather than reservations. Reservations are specific IP leases handed out to a pre-defined nodes MAC address (NIC).

Note also, that the server should have it's own static IP properties point to itself for DNS. This is so that the server registers itself in DNS. The SRV record will be created that I mentioned earlier.

Here are a couple of decent links which might help you.

How to install and configure DHCP on a W2K server

Active directory install, step by step