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cannot logon to network

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8 replies

by p.sigley

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I have a problem whereby users can log on to clients but cannot connect to printers and home shares on one of our 2 DCs, the other one is fine.

I have rebooted the problem server and now it wont let any account login directly on server just saying that the accounts have been disabled. I can see the AD on the other domain controller and this is not the case and all looks fine.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Phil Sigley

8 replies

by mo_hdnadeem

Hi, there
Your question is little bit confusing, but still ,On your PDC -- try to logon to PDC and through Nodes and check the user accounts whether its working or not.(Make sure that u shutdown your BDC Server)Try connecting it., if this does not solve the problem try to reset the accounts in the PDC and then connect the Nodes and then Switch on ur BDC. Further u can cont. me on mo_hdnadeem@yahoo.com

Regards
Nadeem.

by p.sigley

Hi,

Thankyou for your help with my problem, i shall try to explain a bit
better what is going on.

We run two domain controllers with 2000 server on and 200 xp pro
clients. The main domain controller houses the printers and the home shares
for users documents and a second domain controller which houses
networked software. Basically users can log onto the domain (im assuming via
the active directory on the second server which will have kicked in to
replace the main one). However they cannot access printers and home
shares because the main DC isnt allowing users to authenticate themselves on
it.

As administrator i can log into the clients and the second DC i cant
log onto the main DC though, it says my user account is disabled, the
same applies for any other user account. I looked in users and computers
on the second DC and all accounts appear fine and none are disabled.

The only thing we can think of that may be connected is that 3 new
laptops arrived the same morning and someone connected them to the network,
the computer name of these laptops was elonex which is the same name as
the DC that i cannot get onto.

I hope this is a bit clearer, i look forward to a response.

Kind regards

Phil Sigley

by cg it

hummm if your the admin and using an admin account and you can not log on to the DC using the admin account because it's locked out you've got a problem. #1 is could be as simple as a bad cable from the NIC, could be a bad NIC, NIC unplugged.

The good DC that's running and servicing the network probably has some entries in the Event Viewer under Domain Controller and replication as well as under security indicating errors with replication, contacting the other DC, and failed logon attemts. Can you check and let us know what those critical errors are?

by cg it

note: since this is an AD environment, account lockout due to bad user name and/or password would apply through out the domain so you should have been locked out of the second domain controller is that is what happened. If someone hacked in and changed accounts, disabled accounts, locked out accounts, that would have propogated through out the network via AD. so I rule out that as a possible cause.

To be the problem sounds like a bad cable or a NIC went back BUT if you can't log on locally to the computer with the admin account e.g. at the log on screen you choose the computer and not the domain, then that sounds more serious like a breach of security.

by cg it

It's possible the DC itself picked up a trojan or worm that didn't propogate itself to other hosts on the network and stayed in the DC. If that's the case and you can't get in via the admin account either logging on locally or via the domain, you'll have to reset the admin account to get in. There are tools for that. Some free some costly.

by cg it

If you have a recent backup of that DC [prior to the problem]including system state, you might try a directory services restore or if you can't get in to DSR due to password problem, you could rebuilt the server [lotta work but troubleshooting with a lot of unknowns can take more time than just rebuilding the damn thing]

by p.sigley

Problem is not releated to cable or NIC as server responds to ping and you can use it via VNC. I can get into directory services restore mode but only have a backup of the AD on the DC that is working.

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