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Is it possible to join domains via FQDN rather than the Netbios name? Reason I ask is that with netbios character limit of 15, we have two hosts with the same netbios shortened name. Meaning we can join one computer to the domain, but if we join the second it overwrites the computer account of the first.

Any ideas? Will disabling Netbios on all computers allow you to join an AD domain and have its computer account associated with it's FQDN?

Thanks

floyd
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1 Answers1

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No, unfortunately - as far as I'm aware, uniqueness in a Computer account's NetBIOS name is absolutely enforced, regardless of whether or not you're actually using NetBIOS at all.

This is because, like user accounts, the sAMAccountName attribute of the object (which for computers contains the NetBIOS name) must be unique in the domain.

Shane Madden
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    Thanks knew there must have been something else relying on it. Maybe we can hope for this to be included in Windows 2024 :) – floyd Oct 24 '12 at 19:32
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    @floyd And, because it's not mentioned in Shane's answer, the `sAMAccountName` attribute is what's often actually used when applying certain domain settings and policies to computer objects. Because using the account's UID would make too much sense, or something. So even if you *could* get around it, you wouldn't want to, because one of those computers would not be properly treated by the domain anyhow. – HopelessN00b Oct 24 '12 at 20:00