No domain controller and object picker cannot open

[Viba Fima]

I set up this Win2K server as the domain controller a long time ago and
everything was working fine. But now, I got these problems:

1) When somebody tried to log into the domain from his PC, he would get a
"no domain controller" to verify his username and password.
2) When I try to give a user a permission to a file on the domain
controller, I get the "Object Picker cannot open because no locations from
which to choose objects could be found" when the server tries to list the
users on the domain.

I suspected these problems are somehow related to the DNS. However I don't
know how to approach this problem. Any pointer is appreciated.

Thanks,
Krup Nugent

 

[Herb Martin]

I set up this Win2K server as the domain controller a long time ago and
everything was working fine. But now, I got these problems:

1) When somebody tried to log into the domain from his PC, he would get a
"no domain controller" to verify his username and password.
2) When I try to give a user a permission to a file on the domain
controller, I get the "Object Picker cannot open because no locations from
which to choose objects could be found" when the server tries to list the
users on the domain.

I suspected these problems are somehow related to the DNS. However I don't
know how to approach this problem. Any pointer is appreciated.

Yes, it is almost always DNS (or authentication which
is itself almost always DNS <grin>.)

Here's DNS for AD:

1) Dynamic for the zone supporting AD
2) All internal DNS clients NIC\IP properties must specify SOLELY
that internal, dynamic DNS server (set.)
3) DCs and even DNS servers are DNS clients too -- see #2
4) If you have more than one Domain, every DNS server must
be able to resolve ALL domains (either directly or indirectly)

netdiag /fix

....or maybe:

dcdiag /fix

(Win2003 can do this from Support tools):
nltest /dsregdns /serverC-ServerNameGoesHere
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q260371/

Ensure that DNS zones/domains are fully replicated to all DNS
servers for that (internal) zone/domain.

Also useful may be running DCDiag on each DC, sending the
output to a text file, and searching for FAIL, ERROR, WARN.

Single Label domain zone names are a problem Google:
[ "SINGLE LABEL" domain names DNS 2000 | 2003 microsoft: ]