Yesterday I hit a reasonably strange problem, which took me quite some time to resolve, long enough, in fact, to prompt me to post this in the hope that anyone else encountering can avoid the circuitous route I took!

Symptom:

Windows 7 system unable to browse local domain resources (file shares etc) but access to Internet was fine. Was able to ping all local servers and DNS functioned correctly. Decided to remove system from domain and re-add. Upon attempt to re-add process was as normal, including request for domain administrator username & password, but despite using correct credentials, domain join would fail with message:

“The following error has occured when trying to join the “xyz” domain:
network path not found.”

Tried (try in order below as one of these may fix for you);
i) Checked that other Windows 7 systems could leave & rejoin domain. (They could, so it was clearly a machine specific issue)
ii) Reboot, followed by Disabling & Enabling NIC, followed by reboot.
iii) Check that current network is set to “Work” type /category.
iv) Disabling Windows Firewall (or other firewalls) temporarily.
v) Using another NIC (in this case WiFi).
vi) “Removing” NIC from Device Manager & rebooting.
vii) Removing system’s old account from Active Directory “Computers” container.
viii) Reinstalling TCP/IP stack. (netsh int ip reset in command prompt as admin)
ix) Remove & re-add “Client for Microsoft Networks” Client.

None of these fixed it for me and so was just considering a re-install, however I first tried the following, which did work!

Solution:

Remove ALL “Clients” / “Services” / “Protocols” from NIC (except IP4 & IP6 which are non-removable and would have been fixed by step “viii”, above, if they were the problem), reboot and re-add them. (this included, in our case, a “minimum working set” of; “Client for Microsoft Networks”, “Link-Layer Topology Discoverer Responder” & “Link-Layer Topology Discoverer Mapper I/O Driver”). Following their removal, rebooting & re-addition the system was able to join to domain as normal!
Hope this helps someone avoid my pain and as ever, feedback is appreciated on additional options / extra steps etc!

Reuters today posted a news item on a possible “reboot”, as they call it, of Blade Runner.

Any film lover will agree this is pretty exciting, and whilst we’d all love Ridley Scott to make the new stuff it looks like this honour / privilege / responsibility is, perhaps strangely, going to go to the team which put together 2009′s “The Blind Side”. At least this means we are unlikely to see a lack of emotional depth in the Blade Runner “before & / or after” productions, and in a way the emotional isolation & then re-discovery of the characters in The Blind Side could well be said to, in some ways, mirror that of the Deckard / replicant emotional journey / cycle.

Origami at the ready people…

More on this story here.

Loving “wordsquared.com“, and recommend everyone tries it at least once, very accessible and it’s such a simple, but clever idea.

It’s similar to Scrabble, except you play against everyone else in the world at once, on an infinitely growable board!

It’s hard to fully explain, but try it and I think you’ll be impressed!

(For the geeks amongst us it’s one of the first, large, applications to be created using “Node”, a new web application development platform, which specialises in realtime communications & rendering, which is how I stumbled across it)

When using Windows 7, if you receive a message in the bottom right of the desktop stating that “You are logged into a Temporary Profile.” this indicates that your user profile is corrupt. It also means that the system will not retain any profile changes / files created by this user until the problem is fixed. But never fear! There is a, relatively, simple solution;

1. Logout & login as a different / your “backup” user.
(If you don’t have a backup account please make one! You should always have one! It should be an “administrator” level account with a strong password)

2. Navigate to the “C:\Users” and backup / copy the folder with your problematic user profile’s name.
(If it does not exist then skip this step)

3. Delete the TEMP folder in this same directory.

4. Open “Control Panel” -> User Accounts ->User Accounts -> Manage User Accounts” & delete the problematic account.

5. Open “regedit” (via the “Search / Run” box of the start menu). & navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList”, check each sub folder to find which one belongs to the problematic user profile (via inspection fo the “ProfileImagePath” key) and delete the relevant folder.

6. Restart your system.

7. Login as your backup user again & re-create the problematic user from scratch.

8. Restart your system and login as your new version of your, now fully functioning, user!

(NOTE: You can now look through the “backed-up” copy of your old user profile folder, if you were able to make one in step 2, and copy anything you want to keep from it onto your new “clean” user profile. Remember to look through it with hidden files & folders visible; Organise -> Folder & search options -> View -> Show hidden files, folders & drives ).