We have one windows 7 work station that can't seem to connect to our domain (windows server 2011)

Hi there,
Have you tried changing the name of the machine and then joining?
Do you need to create the computer accounts in AD before joining on your domain?
-FB

try renaming the machine first, and also going to AD and making sure there is no reference to the old machine name
also - make sure any antivirus or firewall is disabled - taking care that sometimes the AV says it is disabled but the firewall component is still enabled.

try joining the absolute domain name instead of the pre-Windows 2000 name located on the domain controller.  for example ours is COMPANYNAMENET vs companyname.local, joining companyname.local usually fixes any domain joining problems on workstations that they show up on.

Hi There- As all the others have said before-

In Active Directory Users and Computers Under Computers- Make sure that the current computer name is not already there.

To check current computer name-

Click the Orb (aka start)>Right Click on Computer>Properties Computer Name is listed under Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings.

If that name is in your Active Directory-
Find that name, right click on it and select Delete. It will delete it from the active directory.

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Back to the computer again-
Click the Orb (aka start)>Right Click on Computer>Properties> Then Change settings in the Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings section.

On the computer Name tab, click the CHANGE button. In the section "Member of". Type in the Domain in the domain field and click okay. It will ask for administrator authorization. Type in the main administrator, which should be the same you used to log into the AD.

You are now part of the domain- You are finished.

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If that didn't work-
Computer level
Click the Orb (aka start)>Right Click on Computer>Properties> Then Change settings in the Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings section.

Change the Computer name and click okay and reboot machine. Then back in the same as above to re-add to the domain.

Please post your results.

Ok, i went to our server, deleted the current computer name (123), then on the workstation, I left the computer name(123) tried adding it to the domain by going to computer->properties->change settings->change->clicking on domain then typing in our domain name and clicked ok. recieved an error saying AD domian controller for "ourdomain" could not be contacted, when clicking details I saw that the error was: DNS name does not exist.
I clicked ok, changed domain name to ourdomain.local which then prompts for the administrator account of the domain, I type in those credentials and then i get a message saying the specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted.  I tried entering a new computer name for the machine (321) then tried repeating the steps but I got the same messages.

no firewall is enabled expect for maybe the windows firewall.  

And we do not need to create new computers in AD before joining the computer

i also tried typing in our full FQDN in Domain, ourserver.ourdomain.local and I can the same error saying it couldnt be contacted

Just curious, on this host can you perform a nslookup ourdomain.local?
Should give you the nameservers.
Try doing an ipconfig /flushdns then joining again.

when i tried to do an nslookup ourdomain.local it should our full fqdn and the correct ip address for our server however it showed dns request timed out four times.  I did an ipconfig/flushdns and did nslookup ourdomain.local once again and got the same results, with dns request timed out.....

our dns server is the same ip address as our server ip address.  I already tried to manually set the ip address on the NIC of the workstation as well manually setting the gateway and dns and I still was not able to join to our domain

also, forgot if i mentioned this earlier, if I do an ipconfig/all while setting the nic card to automatically obtain, the ip settings show the dns server of our server ip address

update:
when i ping our server ip, i usually get 2 time outs
when i ping our domain i get the message could not find host ourdomain
when i ping ourdomain.local i usually get 2-3 time outs and 1-2 responses
when i ping ourserver.ourdomain.local i get no time outs and 4 responses

does that seem to point to anything?

Hi Again!

Was this a new computer setup or was this computer already set up prior to adding it to the domain?

I'm wondering if you have some piece of malware on this box that is messing you up.
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Question-
Is your default gateway the same gateway address as the another computer? I'm wondering if you are a different switch and subnet that isn't talking right.
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Have you tried manually assigning the IP and DNS entries?
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Open up Control Panel>Network and Internet>Network Connections right click on your local area connection that you are using, then properties. Scroll down to Internet Protocol Version 4 and click once on it and then click on Properties.

(I don't know your address nature) But should be something like this-

IP- 192.168.1.XXX
Sub- 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway- 192.168.1.1 (If that is your gateway)

DNS-
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

Both of those DNS's are Googles.

Once it establishes a connection, Try pinging your servers.

This was a computer that had already been added to our domain and was working fine for months and only recently started having issues connecting to our domain.  In my troubleshooting efforts, I decided to take the computer off the domain and add it back again but ran into a brick wall: I cant even seem to add the workstation back to our domain.

I ran an ipconfig and the default gateway, dhcp, and dns all match another machine that is happily connected to our domain.

I tried setting a static IP for our NIC with google's dns servers you listed above and tried to ping our server and could not.

I then set a static dns ip of the workstation to match the ip our server and i was able to ping the server ip with one time out.  Then, for the heck of it, i tried pinging ourdomain.local and got two responses and two timeouts.  finally i tried pinging ourserver.ourdomain.local and got 4 timeouts.

not sure if that helps point to something.  I'm also running an anti virus scan to check for malware on the machine

While i was racking my brains out reviewing countless threads and forums for this issue, my budgeting manager (who has very little computer knowledge) said the next logical place to check would be the cable and our switch.  I checked our switch and moved the cable connected to the jack in the room with the affected PC to a new port on the switch and voila that seemed to fix all networking issues.  I was able to connect to domain flawlessly and saw that the user's internet and outlook was working...... I just logged on to see your suggestion as well Ben, which would have led me to our switch room.  Thanks for the help, replugging the cable in our switch room was the last place I would think to fix an issue like this one.

Glad all is fixed =)
Please let the Expert Exchange community know if you have any other issues with other things in the future.

Take Care