Adding client computers to an active directory domain controller

active-directorydomain-controllerdomain-name-systemwindows-server-2012-r2

After facing a hell of a problem with adding a client computer to a domain controller, i followed the answer i got on this site and used my server's IP address as the preferred DNS on the clients computer. I then proceeded to ping the server from the client computer by doing ping 192.168.0.140 where 192168.0.140 is the Ip address of the server and the server responded correctly. however if i ping the domain name of the server from the client by doing ping zedvance.net, I get an error saying ping request could not find host zedvance.net.
I've tried to go ahead to add the client to the domaing but i keep hitting this error 

An active directory domain controller could not be contacted.

Upon hitting details i get the following

DNS was successfully queried for the service location (SRV) resource record used to locate a domain controller for domain "zedvance.net":

The query was for the SRV record for _ldap._tcp.dc._msdcs.zedvance.net

The following domain controllers were identified by the query:
zedvance.zedvance.net


However no domain controllers could be contacted.

Common causes of this error include:

- Host (A) or (AAAA) records that map the names of the domain controllers to their IP addresses are missing or contain incorrect addresses.

- Domain controllers registered in DNS are not connected to the network or are not running.

Please how do i solve this so i can successfully add client to the domain. PS i have a DNS server running on the windows server 2012 R2.

Best Answer

  1. Is your DNS server also the AD controller? If it isn't, you shouldn't point to it for DNS resolution at all. Make sure that your DNS server has records for your domain controller and that you can ping it by name, not by address, and by domain name.

  2. On the domain controller, go into Server Manager. Verify that there are no errors in the little notification area on the top. If this server was added to an existing domain and the SYSVOL folder hasn't fully replicated yet, it won't "advertise itself as a domain controller" and it will cause problems like this.

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