Domain Join fails with 'network location cannot be reached'
Scenario: When trying to join a domain with any windows flacour pc or server sometimes you will get the following ambigious error. The network is UP, the machine is pingable and DNS resolves as expected.
Error Message: The Following error occured attempting to join the domain “”: The network location cannot be reached. For information about network troubleshooting, see Windows Help.
Solution: Ensure that client for microsoft networks is ticked / enabled under the proprties of the ‘domain’ network interface card
kiltrus
5 September 2012Guys I sent a day on it.. at the end it was the machine did not have “Client for Microsoft Network”
scanjam
5 September 2012Not sure I follow, isn’t that what the article says? 🙂
Azim
12 February 2013Thanks a ton. It works
Shyeya
1 March 2013Excellent, saved my day.
Jim Anderson
25 March 2014Thank you! Spent a whole day on this and after trying many other suggestions found yours and it fixed after a reboot.
Anoop
19 March 2013It worked for me as well, but I spent lot of time on it, it seems a malware manupulation.
Samer Jamal
30 January 2014Thanks it worked with me but my machine need a restart first
i was using Win 2008R2 64bit
Rhak Kahr
9 May 2014Hi Sir.. Thank you so much.. It successfully applied on “Windows 7 64 bit” with 8GB RAM. _/_
gopi
1 February 2014Tt’s worked thanks
varun
6 September 2014it worked, Thanks 🙂
amit
16 January 2015very good portal …thank u so much
vinod
20 September 2015very nice portal !!!
Anu
26 October 2015Yes, It worked for me. Thanks. 🙂
Nafees Khan
12 February 2016Tank you so much, in a single line problem has rectified,
sathiya
15 February 2017hi
am also getting the same error also enable “client for microsoft networks”
please share any other solutions
JS
22 February 2017Can you confirm you can contact the domain? Is your local DNS setup correctly? Can you ping the NETBIOS name of the FQDN of the domain name?
For example: if you domain is home.local from a command prompt window can you ping both “home” and “home.local”?
Narayan Das Kohli
12 June 2017Thank You So Much.. Helpful… Saved my day..
Nitai
10 December 2020If the client for microsoft network is visible and checked and you still can’t rejoin the domain do the following:
click on client for microsoft networks and uninstall this
reboot the machine
go back to the properties of your network card and click install, client , reinstall the client for microsoft networks
reboot the machine
try to rejoin the domain
did the trick for me