Systems Management

You need to solve the problem of why they are falling of the domain, which is most likely a secure channel problem between the DC and workstations.

If you have a k2000 you can get the join_domain.vbs and run that as a script.

Const JOIN_DOMAIN             = 1
Const ACCT_CREATE             = 2
Const ACCT_DELETE             = 4
Const WIN9X_UPGRADE           = 16
Const DOMAIN_JOIN_IF_JOINED   = 32
Const JOIN_UNSECURE           = 64
Const MACHINE_PASSWORD_PASSED = 128
Const DEFERRED_SPN_SET        = 256
Const INSTALL_INVOCATION      = 262144

If WScript.Arguments.Count < 3 or WScript.Arguments.Count > 4 Then
  WScript.Quit
Else
  strDomain   = WScript.Arguments.Item(0)
  strUser = WScript.Arguments.Item(1)
  strPassword = WScript.Arguments.Item(2)

'set DNS IP address
  If WScript.Arguments.Count = 4 Then
    strDNSIP = WScript.Arguments.Item(3)
    Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.shell")
    objShell.Run "netsh int ip set dns  ""local area connection"" static "& _
                  strDNSIP &" primary",0,0
  End If

End If


Set objNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network")
strComputer = objNetwork.ComputerName

Set objComputer = GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=Impersonate}!\\" & _
                             strComputer & _
                             "\root\cimv2:Win32_ComputerSystem.Name='" _
                             & strComputer & "'")
ReturnValue = objComputer.JoinDomainOrWorkGroup(strDomain, _
                                                strPassword, _
                                                strDomain & "\" & strUser, _
                                                NULL, _
                                                JOIN_DOMAIN+ACCT_CREATE)

We had this problem also.  The Reason stems from deepfreeze.  I can recreate this in our lab.  We do not allow users to changetime in our deepfreeze configuation.  When the machine is frozen, pull the plug and go into bios during boot.  Change the date so it is a couple of years behind.  let windows boot.  You will get domain controller not found.  We have noticed this falling off happening when we had power hits.  I noticed the bios was loosing the date and time on some machines, Fix for us was to replace the MB battery so the settings are not lost during power hits.

We’ve been setting the secure channel maximum password age to 998 (both on the workstations and the serverswith group policies) to avoid known problems with secure channel password changes via gpo.