Netdom.exe Cannot Join a Windows XP Professional-Based Computer to a Domain (294355)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional
This article was previously published under Q294355

SYMPTOMS

When you use the Netdom.exe utility to join a Windows XP Professional-based computer to a domain, you may receive the following error message:
The specified network password is not correct.

The command failed to complete successfully.

CAUSE

This problem occurs because, by default you can only successfully run this command if you run it locally on the workstation.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, run the command on the workstation for the netdom join command to be successful (by default, local administrative access is not limited). Another alternative is to disable the restriction to only allow guest access when connecting from the network. To do this, you need to modify the Forceguest registry value. For additional information about how to set the Forceguest registry value, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

290403 How to set Security In Windows XP Professional in a Workgroup

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

Upon installation, Windows XP Professional is configured to only allow guest or anonymous access when you attempt to connect from the network. For the netdom join command to succeed, you need to connect as an administrator. If you attempt to establish the connection as a guest with administrative privileges, the join is not successful.

After you join the workstation to the domain, the workstation allows domain administrators to connect from the network with administrative access. The workstation, at this point, still only permits local account access as guest. In other words, if you make an attempt to connect from the network by supplying the user name and password of the administrator account that is located locally on the workstation, they are still only able to connect to the computer as a guest (as long as you have enabled Forceguest). Because of this, other netdom switches do not succeed if you use a local administrator account to connect to the workstation. Other switches that do not succeed include:

rename
move
remove
reset

For information about the supported switches for Netdom.exe, enter the following command at a command prompt after you install Support Tools.

netdom/?

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:1/15/2006
Keywords:kberrmsg kbprb KB294355
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