ITExperience.NET

Due to some reconfiguration, I turned off a domain controller. Everything seemed to be working fine, until a few people complained about authentication errors on a Java-environment. Because I wanted to fix this problem quickly, I edited my DNS-record in Active Directory: I pointed my turned-off server (DC2) to the IP-address of a running DC (DC1). This seemed to be working, until a few people faced an error on the logon script: “Logon failure: the target account name is incorrect“.

In my test environment, the following error occurred during the Readiness Check of my Exchange 2007 installation:

Setup encountered a problem while validating the state of Active Directory: An Active Directory error 0×8007203A occurred while searching for domain controllers in domain [domain name] : The server is not operational.

When you’re in a Windows 2003 network with Windows XP clients, Internet Explorer settings defined in your Group Policy may not be applied. Misconfiguration is often the cause of your Internet Explorer settings not being applied to your Windows XP clients.
In this article i will sum up the reasons why your Internet Explorer settings are not applied. I assume you’re running Windows 2003 SP2 on your domain controller (although SP0 or SP1 should be no problem), Windows XP SP2 on your clients,  and Internet Explorer 6 (at least Internet Explorer 6 SP1). I also assume you do NOT use the Internet Explorer Maintenance Mode. If you do, my advice would be to stop using it. Setting every option in the Group Policy separately gives you much more control.

When running a Windows 2003 server with .NET Framework 2 installed, you might find the following error in the event log:

On our Sharepoint server, the following DCOM error message kept returning in the event log (bold text is Event ID-specific information):

—————
Event Type: Error
Event Source: DCOM
Event Category: None
Event ID: 10016
Date: Date
Time: Time
User: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE
(there may be situations in which the user is NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE)