I've started reading through the Sybex books, and have reached page 190 of the Windows Server 2003 book covering exam 70-290 where it says

You can create a computer account through two options. You can create the computer account in the Active Directory Users and Computers utility before the computer is joined to the domain

I don't believe the latter to be true.

I've been playing around with that thought (tearing my hear out on my testbed ) and regardless of whether I add the computer account in Active Directory first or not makes no difference. The fact is that until the workstation has authenticated itself by a user who has permissions to add workstations to the domain, that workstation will not be part of the Active Directory domain.

In other words, the description suggests that adding the workstation via the Domain Controllers tools is sufficient for the physical workstation to be automatically a member of the AD domain which I don't believe to be true.

So to all you MCSE people out there, am I right and the training book's wrong or am I mis-interpreting / misunderstanding something?!? :confused:

I've logged a query with Sybex / Wiley publishing asking their feedback

Ta

IIRC you can do it but it still needs to be added by a user with delegated rights to add machines to the domain..

We are going to be using something similar as we a rolling out a EU child-domain to cover a handful of countrys.. pre-adding them is the only way we can keep machines in the right OU because of the restrictions we are putting on the directory to only let certain people manage certain "country" OU's otherwise the computers just go into the computers container on the top level, which they wont be able to administer

IIRC you can do it but it still needs to be added by a user with delegated rights to add machines to the domain..

Exactly

Another interesting point is that by default, any normal user from the User group, which is the most restrictive group apart from Guests has rights to add machines to the domain :eek: because a normal "user" is part of the built in "Users" group which is a member of the "Authenticated Users" and the Authenticated Users' default GP allows them to add new workstations to an AD domain.

A ll autheticated user can add upto 10 pcs to the domain unless you take it out of the policy.

I agree the wording in that book is very mis-leading..

If you just add the computer to the domain through the Active Directory Users and Computers utility how will you tell the machine it's a member of this domain unless you go through the steps on the local machine as well?

One of the uses for adding them to the domain using Active Directory Users and Computers is that you can put the station in the OU it needs to be in as Colin said... There is a way of doing this at the station during build time as thats how we built machines at my last job..

But without going back there and having a look I couldn't tell you how to do this. :(

Anyone that administers an RM Connect network in a school should be able to have a poke around and find out though.