Active Directory on home network? DNS Problem...?

Question

So, i've got about 5 computers on my home network. All running XP Pro SP3.

I've also got a Dell Poweredge Server running (Windows Server 2003 SP2).

I'm trying to get the Dell Poweredge to run as an Active Directory/DNS server for all my desktop pc's.

Now...I run the Active Directory installer and it install the DNS with zones and whatnot. I also add computers and users into Active Directory.

Ok, so now im on one of my desktop pc's. When i try to add the domain and user to the computer it doesn't find the server DNS!

What did I do wrong? I think it has to do with the DNS server..

Thanks,

Dale.

Answer 1

step 1:go to system properties, click computer name tab, and then change tab and then more tab there you provide dns suffix, and then try adding to domain.

step 2: provide a host record on dns server for the pc which is giving trouble.

Answer 2

Make sure you have DNS installed and running on your server. Also make sure all the workstations have their primary DNS server pointed to the same IP of your Active Directory/internal DNS server. If you fancy enough, you'll know how to redirect external request to the proper external DNS servers, if not... Make your secondary DNS server a real DNS server your ISP provided (otherwise you'll have LAN access, but not Internet access).

If your workstations don't have your server IP as the primary DNS server it wont be able to join the domain or share resources.

Answer 3

Do you run DHCP or are your IP address statically assigned? If you set up DHCP on your server as well, you can assign your IP addresses as well as assign your DNS Server address and your default Gateway.

You need your server to have DNS installed as well. Set up forward and reverse lookup zones on your DNS server. Also Set up a Forwarder to your ISP's Dns server address. A big question, are you sure that the desktops are on the same subnet as the server?

You need to be an Administrator to join a computer to the domain (generally) there are exceptions.

Also how did you set up your domain? is it Name.local? Make sure on your PC that it is name.local and set at domain not work group. When you make changes also remember it takes AD 5 minutes to update on a domain controller. You can run gpupdate at the command prompt to speed this up.