Miscellaneous

I AM SETTING UP NEW WINDOWS 2003 SERVER BOXES IN MY ENVIRONMENT AFTER A "MILLION YEARS" AWAY FROM SERVER BUILDS!!!

DURING THE WINDOWS SETUP I INTEND CREATING NEW DOMAINS; AS THIS IS THE CASE MY FIRST SERVER WILL BE THE DOMAIN CONTROLLER. HOWEVER WHEN I TYPE IN THE DOMAIN NAME IN THE OPTIONS WHERE I HAVE THE 1. WORKGROUP 2. DOMAINS; DESPITE THE ATTEMPT TO JOIN ME TO A DOMAIN, IT FAILS!!

DOES ANY1 KNOW HOW TO GO ABOUT WINDOWS 2003 AD DOMAINS?

If the domain does not already exist, then you need to install it to a workgroup for setup purposes, then once you have finished setup and have all drivers installed and updates installed, then go to start, then run, type in DCPromo.exe and use that method to install active directory and configure your domain. Keep in mind that it is no longer NT 4 and that you need to specify an Upper Level domain regardless of what you want. To keep it simple try using a name such as [domain].local, but if you already have a registered domain such as [domain].com then use that. If you do not do this then DNS will not get installed correctly and Active Directory requires DNS to function properly, therefore you may need to re-install Windows 2003if this step is not done properly. I also suggest you do some reading before you put such a server into a production environment, you will thank me in the end.