I got a call from one of my friends who runs a small business office. He asked me to help him on joining his newly purchased computer to his office domain. He said on the phone he could not find any “Network ID” section in the computer properties window as I instructed him to do with other machines before. I spent a couple minutes on the phone and could not figure out why, so I decided to play him a visit.
When I came to his office, and turned on this problem computer. I surprisingly found out this Dell computer he just purchased came with a home entertainment-oriented OS - Microsoft Media Center Edition 2002. Well, according to the technical articles from Microsoft website, you can not join a computer with MCE OS into a business network domain by design. And we did not want to re-install his whole OS since he already installed a lot of applications on it.
Thankfully, I got the following useful information from other people’s blog. Just want to share with you here too.
- Insert Windows XP CD.
- Start > Run > X:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons
(replace X: with the appropriate drive letter) - Acknowledge prompt by clicking ‘Yes’.
- Skip updating process by clicking ‘Cancel’ or by pressing ‘Esc’
- After installation, acknowledge success message. by clicking ‘Ok’
- Start > Shutdown > Restart
- At boot menu, select ‘Microsoft Windows Recovery Console’
- Select proper installation to log onto (default: 1) and press ‘Enter’
(If prompted, enter Administrator password and press ‘Enter’) - Type (without quotes) and press enter: ‘cd system32\config’
- Type (without quotes) and press enter: ‘copy SYSTEM C:\’
- Type (without quotes) and press enter: exit
- At boot menu, select ‘Windows XP Media Center Edition’
- Log into Windows and play a game of minesweeper (very important)
- Start > Run > Type: ‘regedit’ and press enter
- Click on ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE’.
- File > Load Hive…
- Browse and select C:\SYSTEM
- Specify key name ‘BANANA’ and click OK
- Expand: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > BANANA > WPA > MedCtrUpg
- On the right-hand side, double-click IsLegacyMCE value
- Change selected value to 1 and click Ok. (THAT IS NOT AN L!)
- Click on BANANA subkey (under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE).
- File > Unload Hive. Confirm.
- Start > Shutdown > Restart
- At boot menu, select ‘Microsoft Windows Recovery Console’
- Take sip of Dr. Pepper (very important)
- Select proper installation to log onto (default: 1) and press ‘Enter’
(If prompted, enter Administrator password and press ‘Enter’) - Type (without quotes) and press enter: ‘cd \’
- Type (without quotes) and press enter: ‘copy SYSTEM C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM’
(Yes, you want to overwrite - Go ahead and do it) - Type (without quotes) and press enter: ‘del SYSTEM’
- Type (without quotes) and press enter: ‘exit’
- At boot menu, select ‘Windows XP Media Center Edition’
- Take a piss while you wait.
- Join domain. What, you were expecting instructions on this too?
(Pfft!)
Thank-you goes to the original author of this post at
http://extended64.com/blogs/rafael/articles/404.aspx
I recently ran across this post after having purchased a new copy of xp pro to replace on the laptop with mce…This laptop needs to be added to a domain. So when I followed these instructions, I did so using the new xp pro cd I had purchased…for me it was a significant shortcut to re-installation. My question, could I have used the mce restore disk to perform these tasks? Or was I supposed to do as I did by using the xp pro cd? I have another laptop to do, and wondered if it were necessary for me to buy another copy of xp pro?
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Yes, you can use MCE restore disk to re-install your OS on another laptop, then follow the above instructions to join a domain. I do not think you need to purchase another XP just to join a domain. Of course, please make sure your another laptop could work with MCE restore CD first.
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I applied the hack you in this blogg (although I had some problems booting off of a WIN XP CD as the version I was using was too old) and sure enough the domain entry stopped being greyed out.
However I still cannot join the domain, it comes back saying that it can’t find the domain, even though I can map drives, login via outlook to the exchange server etc.
Any ideas?
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Joining a domain can sometimes present a problem. The issue lies in the DNS settings of the machine attempting to join the domain.
Check your default gateway. The only entry should be the IP address of your Domain Controller. To determine your server’s IP address do the following:
If your server is named Server1 click on Start>Run type in cmd and select Okay. From the command prompt type in “ping server1″. This will tell you the address of your server.
In the machine you are trying to join go to the Control Panel>Network Connections and select the LAN Connection that is active. Double-click on the icon and select the Properties button. In the selection window locate IP protocol and double-click. Choose the bottom DNS option (Use the following DNS server addresses:) and input the address of your server. Do not put in any other addresses! Close all windows. Go back to your Network Connections in the Control Panel right-click your LAN connection and select repair. (This ensures that your new settings are in place) Then join your machine to the domain.
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hi, Richard, glad to hear that this post worked for you from the item #1 to #33. But it does not hold the responsibility for the item #34 as I indicated in the article.
Just kidding! Yes, first you can try to make sure you can connect to your domain server by pinging as jbublyu suggested. And if you can not get any successful ping result, then use the above process as jbublyu to set up your local machine’s network configuration.
And if you can connect to your domain server, please make sure your account and local machine have the enough permission for the domain.
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I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Joining a domain with Media Center Edtion 2005 /2002, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
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