Hello all,

We have recently setup dynamic vlan assignment on our network, and while it works, there is one thing that is rather annoying/inconvenient about it. After the users try to log in with their AD credentials, a message appears on the screen that says "Connecting to the network", shortly followed by "Unable to connect to the network. Logging on...". The users then log in just fine though - they are placed in the correct vlan, and have the correct network drives mapped. There doesn't appear to be an actual error, so is it possible to get rid of both of those messages? The client PCs are on the domain, they run Windows 7, and they authenticate through our NPS/RADIUS server (running on WS 2008 R2); PEAP-MS-CHAP v2 is the authentication type. Any suggestions/help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

-Nikita

Hi,

If your not doing it already, I would suggest that you perform computer authentication at first, so that the computer can access network and the domain controllers for acquire logon info.

I've seen the same issue as you are experiencing when not doing that...

We are already doing computer authentication - we couldn't log in at all without it.

Hi,

If you have enabled the rejected and successful authentication requests automatically recorded in the Event log, please check in the event viewer to see if any related error message exsisted.

Best regards,

Susie

Hi,

The message is rather generic so it's difficult to know what this is referring to. I've done some searches online and it isn't immediately apparent what 'network' resource is being referred to by the message. I found one other forum post that referred to this same message.

Suzie has asked for any associated event logs. If you can find these, it will definitely help. I don't know offhand which event logs to search. You can try the Security log, searching for the same message that you see in the popup. A screen capture of the popup might also be helpful to show the precise wording.

Also, it would help to know how your dynamic VLANs are set up and to confirm that the message goes away if you do not change the VLAN. In other words, what VLAN is the computer in before the user logs on and what VLAN do they switch to? Is there any change in IP addresses during this switch?

Do you use a user logon script? If so, what network resources are accessed by the script? Are these resources accessible from both the starting VLAN and the final VLAN?

Thanks,

-Greg

Hi all,

Initially, the PC starts out in VLAN 1, which is 10.42.10.x. If the user is in the Domain Admins group, then that user stays in VLAN 1, but if the user is in the Students group, then the user gets moved to VLAN 12 (.12.x), and if it's an Instructor, then the user gets moved to VLAN 13 (.13.x). The error message pops up for all of the users, so it doesn't seem to matter if you change VLANs/IPs. We do use logon scripts for mapping drives, but the file server on which those drives reside is accessible from all of the VLANs. The log file says that the connection was successful, even if the error message is displayed. However, I have noticed that the users don't see any errors the first time they log in, and the error message only appears on subsequent logins, but I'm not sure what could cause this.

Screen capture is here.

Log files are here.

-Nikita

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. Since the page of screen capture could not be found. Would you please provide another one?

Best regards,

Susie

The screen capture has been moved here. Thank you.

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

Accorfing to the log, there were no error messages. Sorry to say that I have no ideas about this, anything updates now?

Best regards,

Susie

Yes, the lack of any errors in the log was the most curious part of the whole thing. Unchecking "This network uses different VLAN for authentication with machine and user credentials" seemed to have gotten rid of the message, so we'll see if it pops up again.

-Nikita