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Systems fail to log onto domain controller

I noticed this past week that while rebooting one of the domain controllers serveral of the clients lost thier connection and tried to log on and could not. Shouldn't the other DC take over when one is offline? Some systems didn't have a problem at all but about 10 were not polling the other dc. All systems are on the same subnet. dcdiag shows no errors, replication looks fine with no errors regarding ntfrs in the event viewer. All failing systems could ping both dc's.

I need to make sure that all systems can poll and log onto the other dc. Anyone know how I can test and/or fix this issue?

DC's are win2k SP4 and clients are XP pro.

Thanks in advance!

oBdA

Is your other DC a Global Catalog? If not, enable it on the second one as well; no GC available, no login ...
HOW TO: Create or Move a Global Catalog in Windows 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=313994

dgroscost

You should not make a Domain Controller a Gloal Catalog if it is running running the Infrastructure role as well (unless you only have 1 DC in your environment)

Keep that in mind.

zenportafino

ASKER

I only have two and they are both Global catalog servers as well. I've heard many times in books not to put the Infrastructure role on the same systems as a GCS yet I've never known anyone to have a problem with it. How do the two roles together prevent a logon?

zenportafino

ASKER

Also, if only one is a GCS and goes down, doesn't that create it's own logon issue - no more GCS available?

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oBdA

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zenportafino

ASKER

Thanks OBda for setting me straight on the Infrastructure+GCS no no. I know that both dc's have the correct dns addresses confiugured as well. I'll look into artical 241515 to verify tht the srv folders have the correct info.

Last week early on I noticed that when I would open up dns on the 2nd DC, the 1rst dc's dns folders wouldn't open in the dns mmc. I re booted the 2nd dc and I could see the 1rst again.

We have a broadcom dual input adapter on our dell 1650 (dc1) with two cables - one going into the servers switch and the other cable going into the clients switch. It shares the same IP for both. I hate this thing cause I have no idea how it works. Everyone at work says it's always been there yet no one knows how to configure or troubleshoot it. I am suspicious of this set up yet I don't know how to rule out if it is the problem or not.

zenportafino

ASKER

Thanks OBda. The information is good to know and I've added it to my own set of "tools" for troubleshooting logons. I learned some good stuff from it.

The NIC has a probing feature that can mess itself if only two ports are using it. I disabled the probing and have not had a client fail to logon yet. When it happens again I'll be using the above methods to isolate where the issue might be.

Thanks again.