Problems login on Windows Domain with Mountain Lion 10.8.3

Date of the Report 09/May/2013:

Hi, I´m having seriously issues with some iMacs (Intel based model) that has been added to a Windows 2008 R2 Domain. The scenario is this.

Equipment and Systems involved:

- 1 Windows Server 2008 R2 Production Domain

- 1 Windows Server 2008 R2 Test Lab Domain

- 5 iMacs Intel based with Mountain Lion 10.8.3

- 3 Macs Pro Intel based with Leopard 10.5.3

Explanation:

We had connected the iMacs to the network without problems; they receive IP address from the DHCP server correctly, connects to internet and internal network with the LOCAL user flawlessly. Then we bind it to the domain without issues, (the only problem detected was a time mismatch, but as soon we correct it, the problem was gone) with the default parameters of the directory utility.

But when we shut it down and turn it on again on the login screen appears a red dot on the right side of the user input field that says: “Network users are unavailable” and we only can login with the LOCAL user. However, after we sign with the LOCAL user account and do a logout or change is possible do a login with the domain user.

We test the same iMacs on a Test Lab Domain (so we can discard network or domain problems) and we got the same error (after shutdown and turn on process). But when we test with the Macs Pro, we don´t have any issue neither on the Production Domain or Test Lab Domain.

Also we have tweaked all the possible combinations from the directory utility on the iMacs, but none of them had worked.

As far as we see, this seems to be a problem with the network service that doesn’t start before a user logs in or the authentication search parameter (which cannot be switched the on the directory utility) is not active to search the active directory users.

Please let me know if someone had solved this problem and how.