Diferent UserDomain from UserDNSDomain

Question

_{Monday, September 15, 2014 6:46 PM}

I just started with a company that has a really messed up Active Directory. When you join a computer to the domain is says welcome to "comp_domain.local", but when you log into Windows it says you are logging into "comp-domain". If you run the Set command you see that the USERDNSDOMAIN=comp_DOMAIN.local, and that the USERDOMAIN=comp-DOMAIN.

This basically causes more confusion than anything.  Things like pinging or setting up connections from other devices become and issue because you have to stop and think about it for a second which one to use.  Sounds simple but can be a pain when you explaining something or under a time crunch to figure something out.

I would like to simply have it consistent.  Is there an easy way to change this?  If not I'm thinking to rename the domain to something like compdomain.local.  Get rid of the _ and -. 

Thanks,

All replies (3)

_{Tuesday, September 16, 2014 12:28 PM}

the differnces you see are the netbios domain name versus the dns domain name. Both can be specified seperately when running the dcpromo command to create a domain. the difference might be created because Netbios and dns have different disallowed characters. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909264

You can rename both the NetBIOS and DNS name of a domain, but I would recommend neither.http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738208(v=ws.10).aspx

Note that "set" just list the environment variables on the computer.

MCP/MCSA/MCTS/MCITP

_{Tuesday, September 16, 2014 6:56 PM}

I understand the set shows the environment variables.  I was simply using that to show the difference.  The issue is more of an annoyance than anything else.  When you authenticate you need to use the comp_domain but when you ping or use FQDN you need to use the com-domain.  Just gets to be confusing flipping between them.  I normally like to keep that consistent. 

I was looking for an easy way to change but it looks like a domain rename.  So I need to thing about how I want to handle this unless anyone else has some suggestions.

Thanks,

_{Wednesday, September 17, 2014 4:03 PM}

you can authenticate to the dns name by using

user@domain  instead of Domain\user

MCP/MCSA/MCTS/MCITP