Score:0

Network profile is public unless domain controller is in hosts file

dj flag

This one has been puzzling me for months now.

I have computers on one network say 10.1.0.0 And my domain controller is on 10.2.0.0

At the moment i can join host machines on 10.1.0.0 so long as i modify the the hosts file (for those who might be having similar issues, and need a working solution, the host file is located at "C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts" with entries to domain controller.

e.g. 10.2.0.5 dc01.contoso.local dc01)

My question is, why can't I domain authenticate or do anything on the domain without that hosts file entry? I literally have the same dns server configured manually in the network adapter ipv4 settings.

I performed a packet sniff and didn't see any thing being blocked when i unplug and replug the network cable. Yet when the hosts file is configured i can see that my network profile is Domain, but if I comment out the hosts file, my network profile is Public.

Any thoughts?

Massimo avatar
ng flag
Without the entry in the `hosts` file, are you able to resolve the DC's name to its IP address?
Chumunga avatar
dj flag
yup, i used nslookup. I can resolve hostname and FQDN.
bjoster avatar
cn flag
Try to set your AD's DNS suffix in the client and use the DNS name when joining the domain.
Chumunga avatar
dj flag
that is actually what i did and that did the trick for me.
Score:1
cn flag

You should not need to edit the hosts file. Joining a Windows Domain requires two fundamental things:

  1. Network connectivity to the Domain Controller (DC)
  2. DNS Resolution provided by the DC

If you can ping the DC by IP address from the computer you plan on joining to the Windows Domain, then you need to specify the IP address of the DC as the primary DNS server for the computer you plan on joining to the Windows Domain before you attempt to join it to the Windows Domain so that it can perform DNS Resolution of Windows Domain-specific DNS records since that is required during the process of joining a computer to a Windows Domain.

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

mangohost

Post an answer

Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.