Hi all, We received an NT server from another company (acquisition). It was a BDC before but we promoted it to a PDC and was able to manage the local user accounts that were there when it was with the previous company. Was working fine until last week. When going into User Manager for Domain to administrate local accounts, we get message "could not find domain controller for this domain". The machine itself is the PDC for the domain. Also, when browsing, we cannot see the shares (but we can blind-connect). Machines on the same subnet can browse through that domain fine (and also other domains). Thought it might be a ns or Wins manager issue but tried removing WINS Manager but it did not help. We have the primary wins set to the wins of the corporate-wide domain. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

did you take away the other PDC?? you cannot have 2 PDC in a same domain. Usually a cannot locate domain controller meant that your lmhost files have a problem. did you set that up?? the other thing could be your NIC card. but since you can PING, i think that's not a problem.. try lmhosts.

If you have subnets on your domain, you need to have a Domain master browser. Each subnet has a master browser. The master browser pronounces the shares via broadcasts. So they cannot go to another subnet. Only a Domain Master Browser is able to get across the subnets. cheers

Hang on a second here. There are few things going on although they may be related. If this machine was a PDC for "another company" as you say, then how does it manage accounts for your company. In order for it to be a domain controller for another company, you will need to reinstall NT. As far as your browsing issue goes... If you have multiple subnets then the reason you can not see computers from other subnets in Network Neighborhood is a routing problem. True, each master browser will announce to the Domain Master Browser. This computer will almost always be the PDC of the domain. The statement that "only a Domain Master Browser is able to get across the subnets" is not true. The reason any machine is able (or unable) to get across a subnet is a routing issue. In NT, the browser service is broadcast based, routers block broadcasts. You need to be able to send the browser announcement to the PDC via a directed datagram, in other words, via the IP address and not a broadcast. You can do this with a lmhosts file or WINS. If you have WINS on your network, which is strongly recommended especially in a multiple subnet network, the machine should register with WINS and be able to find each other across subnets. But you have to make sure that the WINS server knows about all the computers. If you have more than one WINS server, then you need to set up replication between them so they know about each others computers and how to find them. No computer, Domain Master Browser or not, will get across a subnet without the proper routing info.

Thanks so much for the replies. I figured it out. For some reason, the machine was demoted back to a BDC. When I promoted it back to a PDC, we were able to see the computer from the other domain. There wasn't another PDC so it was strange that this happened. I didn't think to check if it was still a PDC because it was promoted fine when we first got it (and were managing local accounts until it went back to a BDC). Any reason why it would be demoted? Thanks again