ERROR: A global catalog cannot be located to retrieve the icons for the member list.

[Kevin Cornwell]

In Active Directory Users and Computers...



In any of our member groups...



If I click on the "Members" tab I get a long pause then a pop up dialog
tells me "A global catalog cannot be located to retrieve the icons for the
member list. Some icons may not be shown."



If I click on the "Member Of" tab I aget another long pause with this
message: "A global catalog (GC) cannot be contacted. A CG is needed to list
the object's group memberships. The GC may be temporarily unavailable. Or,
if your enterprise does not have a Domain Controller configured as a GC,
then one should be configured. Contact your system administrator for
assistance."



Aside from this, our network seems to work fine.



We have the GC enabled. Any ideas why I am getting this error?

 

[Jorge de Almeida Pinto [MVP - DS]]

so, is a GC available?

do you have a DC that has the GC role assigned to it?

 

[Guest]

How many GC's do you have..and are they actually all available/online - and
responding in a timely manner (i.e. the GC/DC systems are not underpowered)?

Try the following NSLOOKUP command to see how many GC's are available...then
you'll need to make sure that they actually are available:
nslookup gc._msdcs.(forestname.com)
(replace forestname.com with your root domain's DNS forest name).

The return is a list of IP address(es) of all the GC's that have registered.
We have more than 200 GC's (multi-domain forest), so it is a long list. I
have a script that matches all the GC's to the domain controllers...and
matches the domain controller names (using NLTEST /dclist:domain) to each of
the IP addresses in the GC record - and sends an email with the results
(differences). (our policy is that every DC is a GC).