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I'm on a domain that I can't control the domain controllers on, but I can control my systems. All the domain controllers are part of one site, and that cannot change.

However, one of the domain controllers is not working correctly and the admins in charge of it are taking forever to resolve the issue. There are 6 total domain controllers... for some reason my workstations/servers are still attempting to use the bad one to authenticate my users.

Is there a way to force a workstation to use specific domain controllers? or, better yet, force it to NOT use the bad one?

Thanks in advance!

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I've never done it, but supposedly you could use the #PRE tag in the lmhosts file on each workstation to set the preferred domain controller back in NT 4.0 days. Not sure if it still works, but it's worth a try. You can read about it at Microsoft Technet here under the "Specifying Domain Controllers" section. Make sure to reboot after lmhost changes.

Take a look at that entire document. That has more about lmhosts files in it than I ever wanted to know.

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I've had this problem on WinXP machines before. Not finding a more elegant solution and being in a hurry I searched the registry for the name of the defective domain controller and replaced it with the name of the good one, followed by a reboot. I'd be more specific about the keys involved if I could but that was years ago.

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Living on the edge, man. I approach the registry like it was a starved panther with astigmatism that makes me look like a tender chuck roast. Do you juggle flaming chainsaws in your spare time? =) –  Wesley May 18 '10 at 5:35
The registry is just another flat file database (or more accurately, a collection of them). If you happen to screw it up just restore from the backup you made before starting the edits. –  John Gardeniers May 18 '10 at 5:44
I do see the offending domain controller listed several times in my server's registry... ugh. I'll try to switch them. Thanks. –  Chad May 18 '10 at 6:36
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