I'm running into some issues, and I can't find conclusive information about what causes the errors I'm seeing. This is a single server, running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise. It runs DNS (although it's not used), hosts our files, and runs our in-house IM server.
I get a lovely pair of errors in the event log upon every server boot:
DFS could not access its private data from the Active Directory. Please manually check network connectivity, security access, and/or consistency of DFS information in the Active Directory. This error occurred on root COMPANY.
Followed by:
DFS Root COMPANY failed during initialization. The root will not be available.
I have hunted around, and checked here the reg key located here. The entry is COMPANY.
The active directory appears to be working, as it authenticates users who connect to access files. But the domain under AD is listed as FULLCOMPANYNAME.LOCAL, and is full of all sorts of… wonky things from prior sysadmins. Is this something to worry about, or should I ignore it until we finally wipe/replace this giant box of anger?
Best Answer
Based on what you're saying in the comments it sounds to me like you have a Active Directory (AD) Domain Controller (DC) computer that isn't configured to use itself or another DC for DNS.
It sounds like this machine has a Domain DFS root configured but, since it isn't configured to get DNS from a DC, the DFS service is failing to properly initialize.
All computers that are members of an AD domain (PCs, servers, etc) should always be configured to use a DC running the DNS Server service for all their DNS servers. Only deviate from this if you really know what you're doing. You shouldn't have any machines that are members of a domain configured to use ISP's DNS servers in the vast majority of deployments.