1054: Windows cannot obtain the domain controller name...

[philives]

Hi,

I am currently having problems with a Windows 2003 server R2 (SP1). We manage the server remotely therefore diagnosing the problem (especially network related) isn't straight forward. We use RDC to logon onto the servers remotely.

This morning the server appeared to go down, there are no outstanding hardware related problems, in fact the server is almost brand new. It was only brought into service in approx 1 month ago with no problems up to this point.

The server is setup as the primary domain controller. It is also configured as a DHCP and DNS server (another server is the primary DHCP server).

We monitor the server using CA unicenter and were first alerted to the server via the 2D map (server icon went red). At this point we tried to logon to the server (via RDC) which failed, in fact we couldn't even ping the server. We contacted the onsite ops team who advised the server is ON, normal harddisk and network light activity, and the server was sat at the logon prompt (as expected).

We had to reboot the server, after logging back on remotely the only errors in the event log (repeated every 5min) around the time of the failure is:

Source: Userenv

Cateogry: none

EventID: 1054

Description: Windows cannot obtain the domain controller name for your computer network. (An unexpected network error occurred. ). Group Policy processing aborted.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

I'm relatively new to investigating server problems, is there a good place to start looking into this issue? I wasn't sure whether this post (here) is the same issue (no reports of being unable to ping the server).

Any help would be greatly appreciated, this is a bit of a learning curve for me.

Thanks

[joe43wv]

Sounds to me like it could be a NIC card issue, a driver issue or hardware malfunction. Try starting there to check.

[cluberti]

If you have the Scalable Network Pack (or W2K3 SP2) installed, and by chance have a broadcom NIC (or rebranded broadcom), you could be being bitten by the problem described in Microsoft KB 948496. It's the same types of issues you describe, so it's something to check.

[gosh]

I would first check the settings for the NIC - including the DNS and default gateway. Netdiag, dcdiag. There should be a userenv log file. There are MS articles on troubleshooting DC issues.

-gosh

[philives]

Many thanks for everyones suggestions, i'm going to look into all of them then let everyone know. I may need more guidance as i'm relatively newe to this.

Thanks so far

[philives]

Cluberti - The server does have a Broadcom network card however we are currently running service pack 1 on all of our servers. Also I don't think SNP is installed as the options described in the manual workaround are not present on our server. Also it doesn't appear in 'add/remove' programs. Excellent suggestion though, it seems a bit ominous that we have broadcom NIC's

Edited June 9, 2008 by philives

[danny_boy328]

Hi,

I have the same issue but one thing I can not understand is that the domain controller is the same machine. Was there a setting whereas when I built the AD, I missed out.

Thanks,

Dan