Domain Login

Hi,
Problem is that during logon workstation broadcast for server and as ur network consis of router it will not past this request of logon validation.
One way to solve this problem is install BDC in workstation side netwok in Bld. no.2 before router.THis BDC will do logon validation.
Others ways I am not sure.This r
i)installing WINS server.
ii)If router can be configured to allow
broadcasting.
First of all try WINS option.Then BDC one.Then conbination of both.
Hopfully this will solve ur problem.
avi.

Some revisions/additions to the previous question. The offices are connected by ISDN, not DSL. The connection is a direct point-to-point connection. Building 1 (main office) has a Cisco 2620 and Building 2 (remote) has a Cisco 802. IP's @ bldg. 1 are 192.168.168.X (255.255.255.0), addresses for serial interface (between routers) is 192.168.169.1 & .2, addresses at bldg. 2 are 192.168.170.X. PC's @ bldg2 can ping and addresses at bldg1 & vice versa. In fact, bldg2 gets it's internet accessfrom a seperate isdn interface on the cisco 2620 at bldg1 (and the internet works fine). There are no firewalls in this situation, so that's not an issue. Everythig with ip works great.

The issue is when we try to log on to the domain, which is on an nt4 server at bldg1, from bldg2, we get the 'no domain server available' error msg. I have configured WINS on the NT4 server, and it works fine. at the bldg2, i can ping the wins server(same as the pdc for the domain). The remote pc's at bldg2 are running win98 with tcp/ip as the only protocol. Of course, client for ms networks is installed, and the option to logon to domain is checked. as mentioned earlier, we can do \\servername\share from 'run' line on pc @ bldg2 and get to on theremote server.

I seem to be missing an important piece of the puzzle.

All answers except #5 have some validity for your situation.
A BDC on the workstation side will ensure proper NetBIOS name resolution, which WINS is supposed to provide.
Your routers need to pass IP and UDP ports 137,138, and 139 for NEtBIOS name resolution. You appear to have this because you can do a map to \\server\share.
One thing not mentioned is login ids and passwords. Are your users logging on to the win9x machines using a valid domain account? There should be three boxes in their login screen. One for ID, one for password and one for domain. (I know this is simple but its the simple things which get you.)
Your lmhosts file may need the explicit 0x1b to designate the PDC as the logon server. This requires the servername " 20 spaces for text" #PRE #DOM:domainname entry to find right machine. Check your lmhosts.sam file in the win98 windows directory.

ralph

Was messing with LMHOSTS file last night on the remote workstation. I did create an LMHOSTS file which contained ONLY the text below:

192.168.168.2 exchange #PRE #DOM:ent

The address 192.168.168.2 is the address of the NT4 PDC which is also the Exchange Server and is named "exchange". The domain name is "ent". When I rebooted the pc with the LMHOSTS file as shown above, it seemed to make the problem worse. I was then unable to get anything when doing a unc such as \\exchange. I do have the correct login screen at windows (username, password, domain) and the option to log on to domian "ent" is checked in the networking properties of the win98 remote pc. As for the account, I tried multiples, including my own and the admin. user/pass combo. I know what all of them are since I created the accounts and no one else knows those login/pass combos and no one else has admin. rights on the domain. As for the port issue you mentioned, I do not believe that this should be a problem, but i am not sure and will research it. I have not told the router to block any ports, but am not sure if any ports are blocked by default. If they are blocked by default, then I have not opened them.

You seem to be thinking along the same lines as I. I think the problem lies in creating a correct LMHOSTS file, but I am truthfully not too familiar with the proper creation of LMHOSTS files. In your response, you mentioned something about 0x1b to designate the PDC as the logon server. I am unfamiliar with this, could you elaborate on the 0x1b. thanks

As I remember, routers normally don't pass BOOTP requests, which is the problem. I had the same problem myself with a remote office.
First, I agree with the suggestion to put a BDC in Building2. In theory that will help.
Having all machines in Building1 and Building2 use the same WINS server is also helpful.
But when I ran into this, those two options did not fix the problem. I still had client workstations that could not find a domain controller to log in. And yes, when I had this problem, the remote office was in another subnet than my primary office is.
I found out that authentication requests have a hard time jumping from one subnet to another. You have to help them out.
To get it to work for me, I definied the PDC in the LMHOSTS file of the BDC at the remote office. I also then defined the BDC in the LMHOSTS file of the PDC.

So, my PDC is \\PDC and my BDC at the remote office is \\BDC. The LMHOSTS file on the BDC has this line:
10.1.1.1 PDC #PRE #DOM:MYDOMAIN

And the LMHOSTS file on the PDC looks the same, except it has the IP address and machine name of the BDC in it.

After you make these changs to the LMHOSTS file, open a Command Prompt and type in:
NBTSTAT -R

That will purge the NetBIOS name cache and read the LMHOSTS file entries. This way, you don't have to reboot to get the changes to take effect.

Here is a article on LMHOSTS file stuff, Q180094:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q180094
(please remove any spaces)

hope this helps.