Windows 7 workstation has no connection to the domain controller

[munshimq]

Hi guys,

I am new to this forum. I have a win 7 workstation that randomly looses internet connection and cannot contact the server. When I try to troubleshoot, it is unable to recognise my administrator password or any other password. Checked the event viewer on the machine but it has nothing in it except error 7036 Service control Manager - at that paticular time. Even though I can ping the server, the default gateway, open already mapped drives and the terminal server..dont know what is happenning. Any help will be much appreciated.

Netowrk is a Windows 2003 domain btw.

Kind regards
munshimq

 

[Lexluethar]

WHat error do you get when trying to join the domain? Does it even try to authenticate? I don't know if you have user profiles, computer profiles or both but have you tried logging in with that user on another PC (i know sounds stupid, just to make sure that it isn't a profile issue on the account)?

Have you removed and added the computer profile back? Disabled the computer profile and added it back?

What error logs do you see on the domain controller? There should be logs created on the domain server when people try to authenticate. If not enable logging on that particular profile / group policy to see if windows gives an error that you can troubleshoot on the domain controller side of things.

 

[munshimq]

We have local profiles on the computer, when other users try to logon it says that there is no domain controller to autheticate. Everything goes back to normal when the pc is restarted.

No other users have reported this problem, so I suspect that there is a service which stops and the pc looses connection to the domain controller. This happens twice every day 13:00 and 17:00 (I assume every 4 hours).

No event logs are present for that time, security event logging is enabled, multiple events are logged for the machine and the user logon during the day.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Lexluethar]

It's windows 7, so i would create a performance log on that machine that monitors the network traffic - monitor it for a day to see if it is completely loosing network connection. If it is troubleshoot that. Could also be that another PC is kicking it off if you guys aren't using DCHP.

 

[munshimq]

hi
thanks for replying.

We have a DHCP enabled on the domain controller.

The problem is that I have just joined the company and the previous admin has no documentation and the network is a mess with duplicate DNS entries, dhcp multiple entries and thats why its even more difficult to troubleshoot.

Any suggestions.

Regards
munshimq

 

[Lexluethar]

Ahh, ya i was curious about that (the job situation that is).

okay first off we need to see if this is a DHCP / DNS / server issue or a workstation / OS issue. Can we verify the PC is physically not losing network connection. I realize it may lose it's IP but is the NIC getting disabled for some reason (virus, bad nic, ect). Once we determine that the PC is physically not having network issues we can then work on the DHCP and DNS issues.

If the PC isn't the issue and you are fairly confident it's an issue with the server we can check the logs on the server. For example i'm looking at the security log on my server 2008 and it shows successful and failed audits under the security log. You can also enable logging in active directory to where it will audit failed and successful log ins.