Hello, I am experiencing the following problem when I try to login to the Windows 2003 Domain using a Windows 98se workstation. 'no domain controler is available to authenticate you... etc.. ect..' The network is setup with two networks, 192.168.2.x and 192.168.120.x with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. The 192.168.120.x computers are all going through a layer 3 switch (Allied Telesyn Rapier 24) wich is connecting them to the 192.168.2.x network. The domain controlers are all located on the 192.168.2.x network and I have no problem loging into the domain from that network. But when I try to login from the 192.168.120.x network it comes back with the 'no domain controller is available' message. I can ping to and from both networks no problem and no delay, and I still have access to network resources, it just takes the workstation forever to boot to the desktop. The only protocal we are using is TCP/IP and the Active directory client has been installed on the Windows 98se workstations. Both the address for the WINs and DNS servers have been configured on the WIndows 98se clients and still nothing... Any ideas on what I may be missing and or how to resolve this problem?

maybe this could help... http://www.computing.net/windows2003/wwwboard/forum/1208.html

Is the switch RFC 1545 compliant, if not install a DHCP relay agent on the 192.168.120.x subnet. The DHCP relay agent will forward the broadcast message ( from te clients) to the DHCP server.

Tnx for the replies guys, Royn, not sure if the switch is RFC 1545 compliant, I'll check into that tomorrow. BTW, we are not running DHCP... All computers are setup with static TCP/IP addresses. Not sure if installing the DHCP relay agent will work.

Can you ping to either subnet by name and IP address? Is the Wins server working alright? Are the TCP IP setting on the clients correct configured? Are the 98 clients using the AD add in from Microsoft? Are the 98 clients using the NetBios/NetBeui protocol?

Hi Royn, Yes I can ping either subnet by either the NetBIOS name or FQDN or IP. The 98 clients have the AD client installed and are setup with the IP address of both the WINs and DNS servers (both Windows 2003 servers). No, NetBEUI is not installed, only TCP/IP... I've tried it with NetBEUI installed on the 98 clients, but noticed no difference. As to whether the clients setting are correct... To my knowledge they are, we have two domain controllers (win 2003)192.168.2.11 and 192.168.2.12. The clients are configured with these two as there DNS servers. The 192.168.2.12 computer is also the WINs server, and the 98 clients are configured with that as their WINs server. Is WINS working right? Seems to be... I was doing some testing the other day and noticed that a newly installed 98 workstation had registered itself in the WINS database. But I also noticed that the there didn't seem to be any entries in the WINS database for the domain controllers... Hope that clarifies things a bit Regards, Pete

Hey Guys, I figured out what what was wrong. The domain controllers where not registering themselves with our WINS server... Once I configured them to use WINS the problem went away and the 98 clients on the other network segments are now able to authenticate. Thanks for your help guys, Peter S Poulimenakos