Workstations lose connection to network shares and need to be rebooted in order to reconnect to shared resources.

I have a situation where workstations will lose the connection to network shares and printers during the night and have to be rebooted in order to reconnect, afterwards everything works correctly, this does not happen every night, and it does not happen to every workstation. .

When clicking on a shared drive, users receive the following error “The system cannot contact a domain controller to service the authentication request.  Please try again later.”  

The network has three domain controllers, one SBS 2013 (we can call DCSBS), one Windows 2016 (we can call DC1) and one 2019 Standard server (we can call DC2).  DCSBS handles the FSMO roles and DNS, DC1 handles DHCP and DNS and DC2 is a file server and DNS.  All are Global Catalog Servers.

I raised the Forest and Domain to 2008R2 and migrated SBS 2013 from FRS to DFSR then promoted the one Windows 2016 server (DC1) and one Windows 2019 server (DC2) to Domain Controllers and moved the DHCP server from the SBS server to DC1 and everything seemed to be working just fine, but now if a workstation is dormant overnight then it needs to be rebooted in order to connect to shared resources, not every morning but most mornings.  This problem seemed to start shortly after I moved the shared drives and printers to DC2, before that they were located on DCSBS, also there were some file shares on a members server that worked before and are now also affected.  The users do not lose Internet connectivity just access to shared resources.

I did have an issue with a couple of workstations when I tried to use Group Policy to map drives, the drives didn’t show up so I used a logon script with the net use command and everything worked just fine.

I tested the file replication on the SYSVOL scripts directory with a text file and it replicated across all three domain controllers.

I have run the AD Replication Status Tool and everything completes successfully.

I ran DCDiag on all three DCs and received the following errors:

I found a Microsoft article “DCDIAG.EXE /E or /A or /C expected errors”.

So I guess the failed DFSRevent, KccEvent and SystemLog are to be ignored.

Running DCDaig From DCSBS

Testing DCSBS:  This message is reported on all DCs and all pass.

Starting test: DFSREvent

There are warning or error events within the last 24 hours after the SYSVOL has been shared.  Failing SYSVOL replication problems may cause Group Policy problems.

......................... DCSBS passed test DFSREvent

Testing DC1: I get the same errors DFSREvent, KccEvent, SystemLog for DC2

Starting test: DFSREvent

The event log DFS Replication on server DC1.domain.local could not be queried, error 0x6ba

"The RPC server is unavailable."

......................... DC1 failed test DFSREvent

Starting test: KccEvent

The event log Directory Service on server DC1.domain.local could not be queried, error 0x6ba

"The RPC server is unavailable."

......................... DC1 failed test KccEvent

Starting test: SystemLog

The event log System on server DC1.domain.local could not be queried, error 0x6ba

"The RPC server is unavailable."

......................... DC1 failed test SystemLog

Running DCDaig From DC1

Testing DC2: This is a new error that I have not received in prior days DCDiag test.

Starting test: Advertising

Fatal Error:DsGetDcName (DC2) call failed, error 1722

The Locator could not find the server.

......................... DC2 failed test Advertising

I ran PortQryUI and all ports queried reported the same on all DCs with a return code of 0x00000000 except the following:

UDP port 88 (kerberos service): LISTENING or FILTERED

portqry.exe -n 192.168.X.X -e 88 -p BOTH exits with return code 0x00000002.

UDP port 138 (netbios-dgm service): LISTENING or FILTERED

portqry.exe -n 192.168.X.X -e 138 -p UDP exits with return code 0x00000002.

TCP port 42 (nameserver service): FILTERED

portqry.exe -n 192.168.X.X -e 42 -p TCP exits with return code 0x00000002.

I ran Repadmin /replsum /errorsonly

Source DSA          largest delta    fails/total %%   error

 DC2                         38m:29s        0 /  10    0  

 DC1                         37m:57s        0 /  10    0  

 DCSBS                    38m:29s        0 /  10    0  

Destination DSA     largest delta    fails/total %%   error

 DC2                         33m:06s          0 /  10    0  

 DC1                         38m:29s          0 /  10    0  

 DCSBS                    37m:57s          0 /  10    0

Results of: DCDIAG /TEST:DNS /V /E /F:<filename.log>

Summary of DNS test results:         

                               Auth Basc Forw Del  Dyn  RReg Ext

Domain: domain.local

 DC2                      PASS PASS PASS PASS PASS PASS n/a  

 DC1                      PASS PASS PASS PASS PASS PASS n/a  

 DCSBS                 PASS PASS PASS PASS PASS PASS n/a