WinXP Pro Cannot Join Domain

  • Thread starter Thread starter HH
  • Start date Start date
H

HH

Small network with 2 workstations and 2 laptops. 1
Workstation running XP Home, another XP Pro. Server with
Windows 2000 server. 1 of the 2 laptops is a few months
old, also has WinXP Pro. When I first got it I was doing
some network troubleshooting and gave it a static IP
address, I was able to Join the domain with it at that
time. The laptop is not always on the network and a few
weeks later i tried to log in and got an IP address
conflict with another machine on the network. After that
when I tried to login to the network, it took about 5
minutes for the login screen to go away, the computer was
very slow and I was not able to use network resources.
After trying many things to fix, I ended up formatting
the hard drive and reinstalling XP Pro. Looked like
everything was fine, but now I cannot join the domain. I
can see, and ping the network, the other machines can
ping the laptop, I get an IP address via DHCP. When I run
the wizard it goes through the entire process of joining
the domain, I even see the computer account created on
the server but at the end of the process the account
becomes disabled and I get the error "The following error
occurred attempting to join the domain:HHBS: The
specified server cannot perform the requested operation."

Has anyone encountered and/or resolved this problem? Dell
help (although they weren't much. . )and Microsoft cannot
seem to help me with this unless I pay over $200 for the
professional help. I guess I'd need professional help if
I paid someone that to help me with software!!

Please help!

HH
 
Just thought I'd post an update. After attempting to get
help from Dell and MS, with no success, I finally
resolved my issue here. After a few late nights and some
aggravation, I finally realized that the DHCP server was
still leasing the IP address for this laptop that I
originally had the IP conflict with. I deleted both the
computer's account and the old IP address in DHCP on the
server. I formatted the hard drive and reinstalled XP
again just for good measure first.

Once I hooked the laptop back up to the network, it got
the next IP address in line, not the old one. I ran the
Wizard again to join the domain and lo and behold it
worked! I'm finishing up now with Windows updates.

So if you're getting the error message below, this is yet
another thing to try in resolving the issue.

Good luck!!
 
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