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By nick, October 4, 2009 12:08 pm

This is a problem I ran into at YSTV recently. We run a Samba 3 domain and have recently upgraded our Edit PCs to use Windows 7. Unfortunately Windows 7 out of the box will not join a Samba domain, saying that the “Domain does not exist or could not be contacted” after asking you for login credentials (so it must have contacted the domain controller already, right?!).

Fortunately though, the fix is quite simple. There are two things you need to do:

1. Install at least samba 3.2.14. This was the oldest version I got to work under Gentoo, but at the time of writing it’s still masked in portage.
2. Modify a few registry keys on your Windows 7 machines:
   HKLM\System\CCS\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters
   DWORD  DomainCompatibilityMode = 1
   DWORD  DNSNameResolutionRequired = 0

   HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Netlogon\Parameters
   DWORD  RequireSignOnSeal = 1
   DWORD  RequireStrongKey = 1

   Some places will tell you to set the second two values to 0, however I’ve found this not to be necessary – you can just leave them to their defaults of ‘1’. If you run into problems, you can try switching to 0. Otherwise, it might be time to check server logs and make sure that NetBios is working correctly to resolve the Domain name to a Domain Controller.

It’s also worth pointing out, that after the “Welcome to the DOMAIN domain”  message, you may get a DNS error popup. You can safely ignore this, and all seems to work fine (and it doesn’t bother you again).

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By nick, October 4, 2009 12:38 am

It has been an interesting year, and those of you who know me should certainly agree. This last year has been my Industrial placement year as part of my Degree – All fun and games you might think. Mostly, you’d be right – aside from the daily struggle of commuting to Leeds every day.

It’s been a busy year in YSTV too. This time a year ago I had just rolled out a bunch of new servers, setup a new flash streaming solution and generally made life more difficult for myself (but better for everyone else, i hope!). A year later, and I’m at it again. This time I’ve rolled out some new high spec Edit PCs, complete with Windows 7. On top of that, myself and several others completely rewired and re-organised the Control Room.

However, what this post is all about is how my outlook on a certain few big corporations has changed – Microsoft and Apple.

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