Mac users can not log into a bound machine continued. Network home folder problem

Bound 10.6 machines require that all users attempting to log in with AD credentials have either a correct path to an accessible home folder or have “force local home folder” ticked in Directory Utility.

Here are some things to try:

Look at the user’s account and see if they have home folders listed.  If they do, make sure they are valid and remove them if they are not.  You might simply want to remove them full stop- this has resolved problems like this in the past.  Something else to keep in mind: Snow Leopard has horrible problems connecting to SMB shares so if a user has a SMB home folder defined in their AD account it could simply failing to connect and halting the login process.

Use the work-around found in this TS article from Apple: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3346

To force a local home folder do this:

Directory Utility > Active Directory > Show Advanced Options

Place a checkmark in "Force local home on startup disk" and uncheck "use UNC path from AD" to force a local home and ignore what's in the directory.

Enable Screen Saver Locking From the Command Line: Snow Leopard

The settings are now stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver.plist:

$ defaults read com.apple.screensaver
{
    askForPassword = 1;
    askForPasswordDelay = 5;
}
$

To turn on the screen saver lock:

defaults write com.apple.screensaver askForPassword -int 1

To turn off the screen saver lock:

defaults write com.apple.screensaver askForPassword -int 0 

Turn on Mac screen saver password from command line (not for Snow Leopard)

Turn on the screen saver password:

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver askForPassword -int 1

Turn off Screen saver password:

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver askForPassword -int 0

Again, this doesn't work for Snow Leopard.

PC: slow login - DFS refferal to wrong DC -using dfsutil

After a re-IP two sites were experiencing slow logins.  Both sites had a "shared services" network where the DC was placed.  The shared services network is on a different VLAN than the user VLANs on the sites.

Start troubleshooting by logging into the local DC, going to Start\Run and typing \\full.domain.name.com\sysvol.  Once the sysvol window opens, right-click on any blank area and go to Properties/DFS.  The local DC should be set as the active referral ("Yes" next to the DC's name and a little tick on the name).  NOTE:  you can perform this check from any server or desktop on the site.

If the DFS referral is pointing to anything else than the local DC chances are there is a problem with Sites and Services; additionally a cleanup of the DFS cache on the DC might be necessary.

• Make sure all the subnets at the location are in Sites and Services, INCLUDING the one the DC is in
• Use dfsutil to clean up the DFS packets and cache

Full details of the dfsutil commands can be found HERE

On the DC run:

• dfsutil /purgemupcache
• dfsutil /pktflush
• dfsutil /spcflush
• dfsutil /pktinfo (shows which DC the DFS share is referring to)
• dfsutil /spcinfo (shows the full path to the DFS share)

Typing "dfsutil" from the command prompt will get a list of commands.

Restarting after running these commands.