I’m going to provide a small guide on troubleshooting the problem with Windows 8 domain setup. I’m talking about the errors that appear when you try to connect your system to a domain or Windows server.
A number of times it has been seen that the option is grayed out and due to which you are not able to connect your workstation to the domain. The reason lies with a problem related to start-up services. It is easy to fix the problem. I think this problem when I upgraded to Windows 8 from Windows 7. I thought there was a problem with the network driver but the issue was different. Later on after going with number of different settings I was able to find out why my workstation was not able to connect to Windows domain. The option to connect has grayed out and it does not allow me to manage any settings.
The second assumption from this problem arise is Windows 8 is not capable of supporting older domain interface. Windows 8 is a new operating system and there are many things which are pending to check. Let’s check out each and every method one by one.
Step one:
Go to your network section or in network places or in network and sharing Center. On the left side you can find an option called as change adapter settings. Click on it and you can see the LAN adapter. Right click on the LAN adapter and choose disable. Again follow the same procedure of right clicking on LAN adapter and enable it again. The network settings will be reset and it will try to collect the new SID. Now your Windows 8 must be able to join our domain.
Step two:
If the above option does not work then the next thing you can do is just change your system workgroup. After changing that Windows will ask to reboot. Very fine that your workstation is on the same workgroup on which other systems are. Or else this problem will be common.
Step three:
When you have installed fresh Windows or upgraded to Windows 8 the internal settings or drivers are not capable of connecting to a network. Also sometime the system fails to collect information of your domain and that is the reason it does not work. So you can go with a manual process of connecting your system to the domain by providing administration credential.
Step four:
Go to system properties and click on change settings. In that you will find that as system properties. Click on change and here at the computer name which does not match with any other. You can also change the domain name your and restart your PC to find out whether the problem is resolved or not. You must properly at all required information like domain ID and password.
One of the most common issue that many people face and they usually know is adding the information in the workstation. If the domain is configured with other systems on the LAN network you will have to collect and network ID so that it can be authenticated.
That is the procedure which works very well on Windows XP. Later on Microsoft removed the requirement of network ID and it has become complicated for many people to find out the right settings. That is the reason I never touch my system because it had to some upgrades I will lost everything.
