Netdom.exe Cannot Join a Windows XP Professional-Based Computer to a Domain

When you use the Netdom.exe utility to join a Windows XP Professional-based computer to a domain, you may receive the following error message:

This problem occurs because, by default you can only successfully run this command if you run it locally on the workstation.

To resolve this problem, run the command on the workstation for the netdom join command to be successful (by default, local administrative access is not limited). Another alternative is to disable the restriction to only allow guest access when connecting from the network. To do this, you need to modify the Forceguest registry value. For additional information about how to set the Forceguest registry value, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

Upon installation, Windows XP Professional is configured to only allow guest or anonymous access when you attempt to connect from the network. For the netdom join command to succeed, you need to connect as an administrator. If you attempt to establish the connection as a guest with administrative privileges, the join is not successful.

After you join the workstation to the domain, the workstation allows domain administrators to connect from the network with administrative access. The workstation, at this point, still only permits local account access as guest. In other words, if you make an attempt to connect from the network by supplying the user name and password of the administrator account that is located locally on the workstation, they are still only able to connect to the computer as a guest (as long as you have enabled Forceguest). Because of this, other netdom switches do not succeed if you use a local administrator account to connect to the workstation. Other switches that do not succeed include: For information about the supported switches for Netdom.exe, enter the following command at a command prompt after you install Support Tools.