Lion & Mountain Lion won't join domain

Question

Hi,
We have a Windows Server 2008 R2 network, with OS X 10.8 Server and various Macs running 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8.
However, we are having problems joining OS X Lion and Mountain Lion machines to the domain, while Snow Leopard Macs work fine.
With Lion & ML, when we try and bind to the Windows Server domain, the following error is returned:
"The authentication server could not be contacted (5200)"
And
"The authentication server could not be contacted" (without the error code)
We have tried joining the domain using the IP address of the server, with no luck. The Macs can ping the domain controller and such. The domain controller also handles DNS, which is properly set in the DNS settings on the Macs.
Our domain name is similiar to this: orgname-idcode
All Servers, Macs are patched with the latest updates. We just can't understand why Snow Leopard works while the others fail.
Any idea?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi ChrisU,
It sounds like it may be DNS related.  Although this article is older and references 10.5, I would make sure the reverse lookups are in place per this article:
Mac OS X v10.5: Verifying DNS consistency for Active Directory binding
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3394
Also, this article will enable debugging logs for the Mac side of things, both AD and OD:
Mac OS X Server v10.5, 10.6: Enabling Directory Service debug logging
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3186
I hope this helps!
- Ari