Questions tagged [active-directory]

A Microsoft technology consisting of an LDAP directory, authentication service, centralized management of groups and user and computer accounts, and primitive configuration management for Windows hosts.

Active Directory is a directory service created by Microsoft for managing Windows environments.

It is used for:

  • Centralized Authentication and Authorization source.
  • LDAP services
  • Primitive configuration management of Windows hosts through Group Policy.
  • Multi-site replication of directory-database data.

Non-Windows functionality is provided through the Samba package on POSIX operating systems (Linux, macOS, BSD, Solaris, etc). All modern Samba releases allow machines to join a domain as if they were a Windows machine.

For a list of ports which must be open in a firewall for AD to work properly, see What firewall ports need to be open for Active Directory?.

Some useful links:

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How can I find out what Active Directory groups I'm a member of?

I'm running a Windows XP desktop in a corporate environment. How can I find out which Active Directory groups I belong to?
chris
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Find name of Active Directory domain controller

How can I find out the name/IP address of the AD domain controller on my network?
user18682
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Command line to list users in a Windows Active Directory group?

Is there a command line way to list all the users in a particular Active Directory group? I can see who is in the group by going to Manage Computer --> Local User / Groups --> Groups and double clicking the group. I just need a command line way to…
Flyer
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What is Active Directory Domain Services and how does it work?

This is a Canonical Question about Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). What is Active Directory? What does it do and how does it work? How is Active Directory organized: Forest, Child Domain, Tree, Site, or OU I find myself explaining some of…
MDMarra
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Is there a way to view the members of an Active Directory group if you aren't a domain admin and can't log into to a domain controller?

Is there a way to view the members of an Active Directory group if you aren't a domain admin and can't log into to a domain controller?
Alan Hecht
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How can I figure out my LDAP connection string?

We're on a corporate network thats running active directory and we'd like to test out some LDAP stuff (active directory membership provider, actually) and so far, none of us can figure out what our LDAP connection string is. Does anyone know how we…
Allen
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Windows Active Directory naming best practices?

This is a Canonical Question about Active Directory domain naming. After experimenting with Windows domains and domain controllers in a virtual environment, I've realized that having an active directory domain named identically to a DNS domain is…
Anton Gogolev
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What is ADFS (Active Directory Federation Services)?

So I've been told that our PHP application may need to support authentication using ADFS. For a non-Microsoft person, what is ADFS? How does it differ to things like LDAP? How does it work? What kind of information would be included in a typical…
Simon East
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Get list of AD groups a user is a member of

Suppose I have the user id of a user in Active Directory. I'd like to get a list of all AD groups in which that user is currently a member of. How can I do this from the Windows command line? I've tried the following: dsget user "DC=jxd123"…
JustBeingHelpful
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Your system administrator does not allow the use of saved credentials to log on to the remote computer

At our office, all of our Windows 7 Clients get this error message when we try and RDP to a remote Windows 2008 Server outside of the office: Your system administrator does not allow the user of saved credentials to log on to the remote computer XXX…
Pure.Krome
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Active Directory explained

If you had to explain Active Directory to someone how would you explain it?
user6848
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How to delete domain user profile from a computer?

I'm wondering how to safely remove a domain user profile from a computer that is a part of a domain. I don't want to delete the account from the domain itself, I just need to remove the profile from this computer, to do some cleanup. I'm currently…
Zlatko
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Any difference between DOMAIN\username and username@domain.local?

I'm trying to troubleshoot an obscure authentication error and need some background information. Is there any difference between how Windows (and programs like Outlook) process DOMAIN\username and username@domain.local ? What are the proper terms…
Josh Kelley
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How to allow active directory users to remote desktop in?

This is my first time setting up or even using active directory. I set it up, and added the computers(Actually VMs in Hyper V) to the active directory, and if if I use hyper-V to connect to the VMs, I am able to use users from the active directory…
user1308743
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Can someone please explain Windows Service Principle Names (SPNs) without oversimplifying?

I have wrestled with service principle names a few times now and the Microsoft explanation is just not sufficient. I am configuring an IIS application to work on our domain and it looks like some of my issues are related to my need to configure http…
Chris Magnuson
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