There used to be a piece of software called ADmitMac but I'm not sure if it is still relevant for Lion.
P
I have been working on this for the better part of the day. Forgive any vocabularly misgivings - I'm new to Macs and novice in networking, and especially useless when it comes to mixing them together.
So, I've been trying to connect an Air (Lion v.10.7.4) at work here to our domain that the rest of our computers function from, hosted on Windows Server 2008.
I've been through the Active Directory bit, and do show the domain as being active, and can see the computers and servers on it listed in the Shared list in Finder. However, I can't access any of them like I would be able to from any of the Windows PCs on the domain. From Windows, I can see the Mac Air listed in the list of domain computers, but can't create a connection to it at all.
When trying to access servers/computers' files on the domain, a grey/black bar shows at the top saying "Connecting..." but ultimately says "Failed." If I select 'Connect As...' I get the error message "'There was a problem connecting the server [name].' The server may not exist or it is unavailable at this time. Check the server name or IP address, check your network connection, and then try again."
My original reason for diving into this was because the laptop's user wanted a printer whose IP location is on our domain added to their desktop instead of having to use the terminal log in. I didn't realize those using Macs weren't on the domain, so, here I am, trying to get that going - but, after much struggling, even though I can't connect to the Mac from the domain (as administrator, with adminstrator access rights enabled on the Mac via Active Directory)....
....I am able to add the printers on our network with their IPs and successfully print, with or without drivers. I don't understand how this works (again, networking novice). It's as if there is limited connectivity happening between domain and client. Google searching has driven me to the edge multiple times, because there are so many variants on what seems to be a very similar issue regarding Active Directory to Windows ".local" domain connectivity.
Also, for reference, I don't want to use the "mobile account at login" option given in Advanced Options in Active Directory. We don't need this feature - our staff using the laptops need as little complication as possible during the day. I did enable the option once today to see if it magically solved anything, but of course it didn't.
Anyone know anything about this? Is this me or is this Lion's fault, as so many seem to be claiming?

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