When we last left Brad, a system administrator for his hometown newspaper, he was having problems logging three new Windows 98 machines on to his organization’s NT-based network. Each time he tried to access the network from the new computers, he received an error message that the network destinations he selected were not available. When he opened the networking properties on the three machines to make sure that DHCP was set up on each one, he found that all appeared to be configured correctly—the adapters had the correct drivers, TCP/IP was configured as the only networking protocol (with DHCP enabled), and Client for Microsoft Networking was selected as the logon.

If you’d like a complete recap of Brad’s problem, click here for all the details. Now here’s what was causing Brad’s headache.

Problem solved
After working with the network configuration on the three machines, Brad found something that he hadn’t noticed before. While in the network properties window, he had clicked on the Client for Microsoft Networks and decided to look at the properties of the client. To his surprise, something appeared that he hadn’t expected—a window titled “Client for Microsoft Network Properties” containing options that Brad wasn’t aware were available.

Brad was particularly interested in the logon validation option. Using this option, Brad was able to have the machine log on to a Windows NT domain and even set the name of the domain he wished to log on to. Also available were network logon options—one for a quick logon and another for restoring network connections.

Brad selected the option to log on to a Windows NT domain and put in the domain name of his network. He left the network logon options at their default and clicked OK to continue. He was then prompted to restart his machine.

After the computer had rebooted, Brad noticed a new option available in the Windows logon screen. Now, instead of just having spaces for a username and password, a new space was created for information about the domain name. Brad typed a user name, password, and domain name into the blanks, hit OK, and was able to navigate the network without a problem.
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