"Invalid Domain Name" Error Message When You Use Active Directory Domains and Trusts MMC (234164)

SYMPTOMS

When you try to use the Active Directory Domains and Trusts Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in to establish trust between two domains, the trust may not be established, and you may receive the following error message:

Invalid Domain Name. The operation is disallowed.

CAUSE

This issue may occur if the computers establishing the trust belong to domains that use different codepages or locale settings. For example, this may occur if the name for domain A is MYDOMAIN.MYGROUP.MICROSOFT.COM, and the name for domain B is foreign language name.MYGROUP.MICROSOFT.COM (where foreign language name contains non-English characters).

In this example, MYDOMAIN may reside in North America and is configured to use the English codepage. Domain B may reside in Asia, and it may be configured to use the Korean codepage. Note that you may receive this error message with any mismatching codepages. The error occurs when non-Latin characters or symbols are used in a domain name and these characters are not recognized by the codepage of the second domain. When this occurs, Windows cannot successfully map symbols or characters from one locale to characters in the current locale, and therefore Windows cannot connect to the domain.

MORE INFORMATION

To successfully establish domain trusts, both domains must use the same original equipment manufacturer (OEM) codepage. There are a number of OEM codepages, each defined for a particular language or group of languages that use the same language script. . These codepages are referred to by a number -- for example, codepage 437 represents English, and codepage 863 represents French Canadian.

For more information about Windows localization and codepages, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/reference/loclanghome.asp