As a XenApp person, you don’t want to have RDP issues.  Well it seems every now and then a Windows 2008 R2 box would display the message “The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted.” when attempting to use RDP

This reminded me of the Windows 2003 issue I use to see back in the day which is displayed in the in this article from Microsoft.  Once the registry below was applied, I never saw the message again.  After Googling a bit, I saw multiple folks having the same issues.

  1. Open regedit
  2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server
  3. Click Edit, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
  4. In the New Value #1 box, type IgnoreRegUserConfigErrors, and then press ENTER.
  5. Right-click IgnoreRegUserConfigErrors, and then click Modify.
  6. In the Value data box, type 1, click Decimal, and then click OK.
  7. Quit Registry Editor.
This solved the problem… 😛

10 responses to “Windows 2008 R2 RDP issue – The Specified Domain Does not Exist…”

  1. Dan Robertson

    Thanks! I saw the KB article but didn’t try the workaround at first because it was for Server 2003. But this fixed my issue on a few Server 2008 systems..

  2. danieljrobertson

    Thanks! I saw the KB article but didn’t apply the workaround at first because the article stated it applied only to Server 2003. But this fixed the issue I had on a few Server 2008 systems.

  3. Santosh

    Excellent!!!… This worked for me. THANKS!!!

  4. Tracy

    Wow. so glad I came across this post! Fixed the issue I’ve been working on for days. THANK YOU!!!!

  5. Todd Meyers

    Thanks, this just worked for me on Windows Server 2012 R2. Crazy!

  6. It worked for me as well

  7. Eric

    Thanks, I was banging my head over this for a while. I gave it a try on a 2008 server and solved the issue.

  8. Andrew

    Wow, so I just did a reboot of clients Windows 2012 r2 terminal server (which I’ve done many times) and this time all of a sudden it came up with this error. The AD server was fine, and I was starting to get a little anxious, as I couldn’t remote to the admin console either. Luckily my MSP software allows me to remotely change registry settings….added that and WHALLA! You are a champion. Thank you Daniel, screw you M$

  9. Thanks a lot, you save my day… twice 🙂

  10. Arvinder

    Thanks a lot for this article…helped a lot and issue got fixed too

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I’m Daniel

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