I have a network at home and I am having a problem getting the workstation to acknowledge the domain. I have set this up B4 and it worked but now I don't know if I'm over looking something or if it's the OS. Here's the weird thing. The WS is set up as a Workgroup, but I can access the server and the shares there. I checked the sharing portion on the server and it's set up to only B shared to specific PC's or Users not to everyone. I can also see the workgroup on the server. I can ping both boxes. What I find weird is that the network set up wizard says the domain is not valid or doesn't exist. If that's true then why can I access the actual server and w/o a PW? I also set up the user & PC account on the server & verifed I had PW and spelling correct. It's like the workgroup joined the domain.

First, what are you running as a Server? What OS? And did you setup the workstation to log onto the domain or a workgroup? It sounds like you did both (which you can't). Also, on the shares, if you have full access to Everyone, then everyone has full access, change that to block people out....

Hey Lucid, Sorry I left that out. The Client is W2K Pro on a Compaq deskpro EN 733 and the Server is W2K Adv. Server on a Compaq deskpro EN 733(tower). The permissions are not set up with full access to everyone. I thought I put that in the post, but hey it was late here so maybe I didn't. What I did 4 the shares is assign the share to individual users. That's waht's freaky is that the workgroup is not even set up as an account on the server. Yeah I'm really baffeled by this. I didn't think you could get a workgroup on a network in such a way. I set up the accounts on the server for this user not the workgroup. I've set this all up B4 successfully so that's why I'm a little confused. Thanks

Sounds like a name resolution problem. Is your DNS configured correctly? Did you install DNS prior to DCpromoing the domain controller or was it set up during the dcpromo? When you ping the machines, can you do so by both IP address and with computer names? You should be able to ping "yourservername" from both the workstation and the domain controller. You should also be able to ping your domain name. Are you pointing both machines to use the DNS server in the properties of tcp/ip? Hope this helps and best of luck. Feel free to e-mail me with any questions.

Thanks Mike, WEll this all started when I re-installed W2K Pro on the workstation. B4 the re-install it all work and was configed. I haven't tried all your suggestions yet and will. I did ran ipconfig and pinged from server to WS and from Ws to server with just addresses. I reinstalled DNS again and I think it is set up properly. I'll check it again to B sure. Thanks again

No problem. Make sure your DNS is configured properly with both foward and reverse lookup zones for your domain. Enable Dynamic Updates for both zones. After that from a command prompt do an ipconfig /registerdns (This should register your domain controllers service records if they are not already there) Then from command prompt type nslookup and hit enter. This command should return with the name of your server and its ip address. From the nslookup prompt type "yourfulldomainname" hit enter...this should return "yourservername"."yourdomainname" and the associated IP adress. If all seems fine from here go to the workstation tcp/ip properties and make sure the IP address of your server is entered for both the default gateway and the preferred DNS server. Verify your workstation computer name is different than what you had it before the reinstall or make sure the old computer account has been deleted on the server if you want to use the old name. Then try and join the domain from the workstation. If you want to join with a user account other than with the administrator account of your server, make sure that user account is created in active directory users and computers. Again, I hope this helps.

I went thru all the things in the command window, but had to stop at the nslookup. It could not find the server. It reported an address of 127.0.0.1 which is not the address of the server. So I'm not sure how to resolve that. I checked the event viewer and these are some of the things it's saying. This Machine is a PDC of the domain at the root of the forest. Configr to sync from external time source using the net command net time /setsntp: Dynamic registration or deregis. of 1 or more DNS records failed W/following error No DNS servers configed for local system.