Anybody ever experienced this:
In a 1500+ PC workstations site equiped with NT4 servers and Win98SE clients, some will not show the Domain Logon at startup.
It appears that the WS is asking to renew the IP address at startup, gets acceptance from one of two DHCP servers, and cary on with domain logon. This is normal.
On the troubled workstations for some reason, after the initial IP renewal, the workstation apparently discard the IP adress and does a complete IP discovery/negotiation sequence, with discover/ offer/request/accept. Some time it will get a new IP adress some times it will get the same as was first renewed, depending of the accepted offer from the DHCP server.
It looks like for some reason the IP stack is reset. This is asyncronous to the Windows startup, so at the time of logon, there is no IP stack, causing Windows to display only the Windows logon, and not the Domain Logon.
No need to say, the initial IP renewal is completely valid (I compared this with an analyzer).
What will make the IP stack reset, during startup?.
The workstations are newer Compaq models with i8xx chipset and onboard Intel NIC.
We tried forcing LAN speed/duplex, using 10 MB hubs instead of switches etc. to no avail.
Any sugestions