Attempts to change from workgroup OAKLEAF to join domain oakleaf.org for a new Win 7 Prof VM fail with errors such as "The semaphore timout period has expired." The Win 7 VM is using DHCP and its reservation shows VMNAME.oakleaf.org. Other computers on the network (except the DC) appear in the network window with Network Location: oakleaf.org and Workgroup: OAKLEAF. What's the secret of joining a vitual Windows 7 client to a Windows 2003 R2 Server domain? Thanks in advance for your help, Roger JenningsOakLeaf Blog

It just works for me, nothing special to do. If it can get its network config from DHCP, the networking must be OK. Does "nslookup oakleaf.org" work?Bill

Bill,Thanks for the reply. nslookup oakleaf.org works fine from the host OS (Win Server 2008 R2) and virtual Win 7 client. Ping withcomputer name (oakleaf-dc1) works fine. The only event in server's DNS event viewer is "The DNS server has started." No other clients have problems joining the domain. Therefore, I've concluded that DNS and AD are behaving as expected.Note that the client and serverare multihomed.Server running NAT for Internet; client runs External Network on a dedicated NIC. No connectivity issues with either machine.Mystery to me.--rj OakLeaf Blog

Appear to have solved the reported problem by turning Windows Firewall off (hopefully temporarily) on the internal (Work) network and rejoining the domain. However, the process was very slow and threw an exception (paraphrased as unable to change DNS name to "").After joining the domain, network connectivity slowed to a crawl (i.e., pinging the DC timed out or took ~500 ms.). After a couple of restarts, the network suddenly became unauthenticated and changed from a Domain to a Work (unauthenticated) network. Otherworkstations in thedomain weren't visible. Many other problems occured, so reverted to a snapshot prior to joining the domain.I plan to retry this on another VM, but the problemsare discouraging, to be generous.--rj OakLeaf Blog

In reply to a Tweet for help fixing this problem, Liam Westley suggested exchanging the physical NICs for the External Network. I took his advice and that solved most of the connectivity problems I'd been experiencing with the Windows 7 guest OS.For the lavishly illustrated details, see my Unable to Activate Office 2010 Beta or Windows 7 Guest OS, Run Windows Update or Join a Domain from Hyper-V VM blogpost of 11/29/2009.--rjOakLeaf Blog