XP Pro Workstations and a W2K Server

I am going to ask a few questions first. Is there a trust relationship between the two domains? Is DNS set up correctly? Win2K's Active Directory is picky about DNS, which might explain why they can authenticate to the NT server and not the other. Is the Win2K domain running in native or mixed mode? Is the NT domain a child domain of the WIn2K domain? Are the XP clients getting their network info via DHCP or were their network settings done manually?
Check the network settings on the two that work both ways. To which domain do they belong? Are the others in the same domain?
Let me know if you need clarification.

John Wheaton

Hi John

Thanks for your help. Forgive my ignorance about some of your questions but i am still learning networking. I will answer what i can. I will be removing the NT server completely once i have suceeded in getting all workstations on the w2k server. I can't answer your first few questions with confidence because i don't know how to check what you've asked. The w2k server is a DHCP server and DNS server, the clients are set to obtain IP addresses automatically but they will not obtain DNS addresses automatically. I have to specify the DNS Server (10.1.1.99) or the internet wont work. all xp clients work perfectly well on domain1 (NT) but so far i can only get 2 to work on domain2 (W2K) but i can't see whats different

Hi Brian

Have you tried to setup each client computer using the wizard? Go to the Win2K server and click on Start>Small Business Server Administrator Consol. This will dispaly a consol with two panes. In the left pane select computers and you should see a graphic near the top of the right hand pane labelled 'Setup Client Computer' Click on this and follow the prompts. You must enter the computer name exactly as it is on the client computer - right-click My Computer, select properties and then click the Computer Name tab to view this on the client. The wizard will prompt you for a floppy disk onto which it copies four files, one of which is setup.exe, which you should then run on the client in question.

Also, you must make sure that the DNS server adress(es) are listed correctly. For example clients have 192.168.0.1 as the first IP address on my network to search for when registering on the domain, a second DNS address points them to the router (or the machine acting as the internet gateway). This second address is the same as the gateway address (otherwise the client will query your internal DNS server when trying to resolve internet addresses and fail).

You must also make sure that the clients are configured to get their IP addresses dynamically if you are using DHCP (though the network setup disk should do this for you).

Check your server to make sure that the DNS server service is running, and make sure it is configured correctly. You must also make sure that the DHCP server service is running, and that the service is correctly configured.

Hope this helps