New Network Administrator

so I'ts my first day at my internship and I'm stuck. I've been tasked with finishing a server and I've never done anything like this before. I've added all the user accounts but I don't know how to make all the user computers show a log in screen on start up so that they have to provide their info to use the computers, and so they can log onto any computer.

 

Your setting up a domain controller?
You have to join the XP desktops to the domian.

Not to be mean, but how did you land this intership?

 

It is apart of our training Teacher sends us out to a business he owns and work there under the guidance of a senior tech. By guidance I mean sink or swim. No life preserver here. Its basically so we can graduate with work experience and get some on the job training.

Also I can't join any of the computers to the domain. I can't ping the server either.

but I have a program that lets me monitor users from the server. It allows me to blank all the computer screen which works. While this works I can't ping the computer from the server.

My biggest problem is that I didn't set up the computers or the server. The intern before me did. So I don't know if he did it correctly or not. I know for a fact that this was also his first time working on a network and server.

I know that I have a lot to learn which is why I bought the Windows 2008 Server Bible from my neighbor. If there's any other reading material that I should get I'd appreciate it, and any idea on what the cause of my problem could be I'd love to hear it.

 

Are you getting any kind of error message when you attempt to join the computer to the domain?

This sounds like the computers may be configured not to respond to ICMP/ping traffic. You could check the firewall settings to see if ICMP is allowing echo requests for the systems network card.

I don't really have any books to recommend but I would say being new to administration learning DNS, DHCP, and understanding Windows policy settings (local and group policy) might be a good place to start.

 

the domain controller could not be contacted

the error was: "No DNS servers cofigured for local system;"
(error code 0x0000267c DNS_ERROR_NO_DNS_SERVERS)

you were right. I reconfigured the firewall on the user computers and they can ping each other, but they still can't ping the server even when the server's firewall is off.

thank you for the advice

 

What Anti-virus / protection software is on the server? Seems everything has a built in firewall these days. You will need to check the documenation on that to have it setup properly for a domain controller.

You can get out from the server to the stations so at least it looks like the hardware for the network is ok.

How complicated is the network? Managed switches? Firewall boxes?

 

I'm going to assume you already ran dcpromo on the server.

The first thing I would do on the client computers is to ping the server and then the domain, if they can't, a trick would be to set the DNS entry for the computers that are trying to connect to the domain of the DC.

And, I'm guessing this is 2008 r2 sp1? yes?

 

Do you have a DNS server on the network and is it up and running?
Make sure that each client's network configuration is pointing to the DNS server's IP.

You can try running "nslookup" from a client computer to see if it's accessing the DNS server. Enter a host name or ip address at the prompt to see if you get any response.

 

at the moment no antvirus is on the server. Windows firewall is the only form of protection on it at the moment.

its all switches

correct

I can't ping from or to the new server but I got my hands on the old server which works fine. I'm trying to find out the difference between the two configurations.

yep. Bosses wanted to migrate from 2003 to 2008

I have a dns server on the network. At the moment its not working.

I tried and they aren't. On the new server when I type ipconfig it tells me media state....media disconnected is this important.

also thank you all for the help.

 

so I was wrong. The dcpromo had not been run. My work day ended a while ago so I didn't have time to to run it.

 

You might want to check the new server and make sure the ip address and subnet mask are correct. If the new server is on a different subnet for some reason that could prevent a ping.

Has DNS been installed on any of your servers? There should be a DNS icon under Administrative Tools.

This sounds like the network configuration may be set to DHCP but there was no DHCP server to respond to the request during startup. For servers make sure they have static ip addresses assigned.

This would prevent joining a workstation to the domain if it were the only domain controller, but I think what's happening is it can't find the primary domain controller because DNS isn't working.

If you sure your DNS server is up and running try to ping a computer with the FQDN (host name) instead of the ip address. If it fails because it could not find the host something is has gone wrong with DNS.

 

thank you all so much for all your help. The client computers are up and running and are on the domain. The only thing left is to connect internet to the server and share it with the clients.

thank you guys again. You really helped to learn alot.