MattW

Hope one of you guys can help on a wslow Friday

I have a Sony Vaio laptop running XP Prox, SP2 fully patched up etc etc. The laptop is registered with a domain, however 99.9% of the time I have mobile and there wish to use a local profile.

On login the laptop will hang for a couple of minutes, the event viewer shows:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: NETLOGON
Event Category: None
Event ID: 5719
Date: 14/10/2005
Time: 09:28:17
User: N/A
Computer: <Deleted>
Description:
No Domain Controller is available for domain <deleted> due to the following:
There are currently no logon servers available to service the logon request. .
Make sure that the computer is connected to the network and try again. If the problem persists, please contact your domain administrator.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 5e 00 00 c0 ^..À


Obviously it seems to hang waiting for a network connection, however that is rarely available. Is there a fix for this, or even an update I can make to reduce thge time it takes searching for a domain controller?

Muchas Gracias

Nick

An XP Pro pc will cache the network password, so there should be little if no delay when not logging to the domain. Check that the domain logon is setup correctly. Do you have any mapped network drives or startup apps that require network connection, eg firewall? Is the anti virus set to update from a server mirror? Does the same issue happen if you log to the computer domain? Are you using a static IP address?

cigarboy

Try turning off "Digitally Encrypt Secure Chanel Encryption (ALWAYS)" - sometimes that has an impact.

TonyFlow

I know that XP can take an age to log-in if DNS server addresses are not contactable, if you are not connecting @ work, then perhaps if DNS is set to the work servers that is causing the problems?

Kieran_Burns

iTrader: (1)

Create a text file containing the following:

10.10.10.10 <ServerName>
10.10.10.10 "DOMAINB \0x1b" #PRE
10.10.10.10 <ServerName> #PRE #DOMOMAINB #DII DC

Where <ServerName> is the name of the PDC in Domain B, and 10.10.10.10 is its IP. Obviously you'd also need to substitute the real name of domainb in the last line.

If you've not played with host files before, its important to know that for the 1b enty (second line above) must have exactly 20 characters between the quotes (ie 15 before the \ , the 0x1b counts as one character making 16 in total, if you see what I mean).

I'd suggest naming it something sensible like domainb-hosts.txt

Copy this to somewhere on your laptop, then navigate to Advanced TCP/IP Settings for your NIC and select the WINS tab. Make sure that 'Enable LMHOSTS lookup' is enabled (ticked) and then click on Import LMHOSTS. Find the file you've just created and click Open - this will automatically set up the hosts file for you (appending to one if it already exists).

MattW

Thanks all. There are no shared drives etc, or any auto updates being called.

Cigarboy - could you elaborate please?

Kieran - The problem is when I am not connected to a network. Correct me if I'm wrong but your solution corrects the problem when connected to the network??

Kieran_Burns

iTrader: (1)

Doh! Missed that bit! I saw the error message and I've seen it so many time before I went into auto-pilot for fixing it.

In which case - don't log on to the domain when not plugged in!

cigarboy

Press Start, choose run, enter secpol.msc. This is a snap in for the MMC, and lets you edit various environmental options, amongst other things, relating to domain membership and how it tries to contact the controllers. Might help.

MattW

Sorry I meant what are the implications of turning it off and how would it help. I'll give it a try anyway. The policy config is not something I have ever been clued up about.

smokebelch

Try looking at whether it is caching logons ..

Open regedit and check HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon in there should be an entry called "cachedlogonscount" and it should be set to something like 10.
If its set to 0 it will not cache any logons and so will look for a network connection every time.

KiwiGTI

There is no way, it will always be slow unless you log on to the local machine instead of the domain.

On XP and AD? NetBIOS isn't used at all for the DC locator service.

People who use hosts files should be shot.

MattW

It is set to 10.

MattW

Slow logging onto the domain, network disconnected, Ok when logging locally.

Kieran_Burns

iTrader: (1)

people who DON'T use hosts files won't get ISA web publishing

KiwiGTI

On clients?

Kieran_Burns

iTrader: (1)

Nah - on the ISA Server itself: you need to force it to use the internal address of the Web Server rather than the public one, else it gets into a loop

David_Wallis

Let me understand this better...

Your logging into a domain, but the machine isnt connected to the network.. but if you login locally its fine..

If so, Id expect error messages and it to be really slow..

Just login locally, or buy a gprs / wireless connection.

MattW

Yes, I'd expect it to be slow(er) however it hangs for two minutes before reporting the domain is unavailable. I would expect it to have worked that out quicker.

Foot_Tapper

Matt, not sure if it is this;
"No Domain Controller is available for domain <deleted> due to the following:
There are currently no logon servers available to service the logon request"
And it happens when NOT connected to a network ???? YES?
Try re-adding laptop to domain, if you have permissions to do so, when CONNECTED to network of course.
Unless i'm totally up the wrong balmy tree this Monday morning,( which is possible )
Other than that u obv have a program/ previous drive mapping that attempts to access network.

MattW

Seems to be much better since I just reconnected to the network via vpn. Maybe there was a corruption on the local cache profile.