Computers deleting from Domain

[Kevin]

Does anyone have an idea why a Laptop running Windows 2000
with SP4 and has already been part of my domain for a
while suddenly loose it's account so the user/machine
cannot log in. It gets an error saying unable to locate
domain and user account or computer account may be missing
or deleted.
Thanks

 

[Paul Bergson {MCT, MCSE}]

Check to see if the computer object is still in AD.

If not then remove the workstation from the domain locally and then add it
back in. If it exists you could have a machine with a password problem.

If you are using Server 2003 and the account exists then try resetting the
computer account from ADUC.

 

[kevin]

What might cause the machine to drop out of the AD in the
first place ?

 

[Paul Bergson {MCT, MCSE}]

If it is missing, probably human error.

 

[Kevin]

There is no setting or other type of "human error" that
could cause this problem ? I personally reloaded this
Laptop to the Network and verified it was in fact on the
Network through AD. So I know it was there and it cannot
be removed by the user. Unless there is some sort of
setting that I am not aware of. You have been a great help
and I hope you can make further suggestions to help me fix
this problem. This is NOT the first machine that has
dissapeared like this. Thanks

 

[James Smith]

Check to see that ALL your domain controllers are working
correctly. We had this problem and it turned out that we
had a domain controller in a remote site which had faulty
memory. The DC was sitting there quite happily corrupting
it's NTDS.DIT file - not good :-(
The only time we realised was when the DC stopped working
and blue screened on every reboot.
It might not be just computer accounts that go missing -
if you use DFS you might notice that your new links also
start to disappear.
Why Microsoft used JET for Active Directory (and Exchange)
I have no idea! Compared to "proper" SQL it's poor (and
that's me being polite)

 

[Alex Bogdanovsky]

Check to see that ALL your domain controllers are working
correctly. We had this problem and it turned out that we
had a domain controller in a remote site which had faulty
memory. The DC was sitting there quite happily corrupting
it's NTDS.DIT file - not good :-(
The only time we realised was when the DC stopped working
and blue screened on every reboot.
It might not be just computer accounts that go missing -
if you use DFS you might notice that your new links also
start to disappear.
Why Microsoft used JET for Active Directory (and Exchange)
I have no idea! Compared to "proper" SQL it's poor (and
that's me being polite)

 

[Alex Bogdanovsky]

Did you guys ever get this resolved?
We are having a similar issue. Happened several times already.
I could be mistaking, but I believe it started after we introduced 2003
domain controller into ad.
We have an empty root domain with 2 out of 3 DCs running 2003. The child
domain, that experienced these issues, has 1 out of 4 DCs running 2003.

Alex