Windows Server Team

Hi all,

first time post so please go easy on me!

I've just started working with AD and am slowly getting to grips with it. However I am facing some problems with some of my remote users. I'll give some backgroud. Most of my users have in the past been logging onto the local machine, rather than onto our domain. Now that they have some network drives they need to connect to our doamin via VPn when working remotely. The problem I'm getting now is that a if they haven't been in the office for a while they fall of our domain and then hav eto come into the office to be re-added. It's not a problem for me but most of the remote users are spread across the country, so it present s a logistics problem.

I did mention this to someone who mentioned that AD needs to sync with the laptops every 7 days, but I can find no evidence of this. What I want to do is thus;

1. Find out why this is happening
2. Resolve this issue, before it starts becoming a major problem.

 Has anyone else seen this problem? Or know why it's happening and what casuing it? Very grateful for any insights and advice.

 regards.

 I'm assuming that the remote users are using XP.  Between the XP machines and the domain controllers there is a secure channel and there is actually a computer password assigned to each XP member machine, this password changes every 30 days be default so if they don't connect within 30 days that password will have changed and they won't be able to connect to the domain.

You can reset this secure channel by using netdom.exe

To reset the secure channel;

netdom reset memberpcname /domain:domainname

You can run this on any domain joined computer or a dc assuming that you have adminstrative rights.