If you’re a computer user, you’ve probably heard of Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). AD DS is the central authority for managing your computer accounts and settings in your domain. You can use AD DS to manage your users, computers, and other objects in your domain. If you’re not a computer user, you may be wondering how to join a domain. Join an existing domain is the simplest way to join a new domain. To join an existing domain, follow these steps:

  1. Log on to yourdomain.com and open the Active Directory Users and Computers tool. This tool allows you to view the accounts in yourdomain and find the computers that are associated with it.
  2. In the Accounts area of the tool, click on the Add button to add a new account to yourdomain.com. The Add button will ask you for some information about the account you want to add. For example, you might be asked for your name, email address, or other information that will help identify this account as belonging to yourdomain.com.
  3. In the Accounts area of the tool, click on OK when prompted for additional information about adding an account to yourdomain.com. The Add button will now show a list of accounts in yourdomain that have been added as members of that same domain!

We have shown you how to install Active Directory on your network, but it’s pointless to have a Domain Controller unless you add your machines to the Domain, so today we’re going to cover how to do that.

Note: this is part of our ongoing series teaching IT administration basics, and might not apply to everybody.

Adding a Computer to an Active Directory Domain is not hard by any means, but there are 3 things you should always remember:

Rename the machine to a user friendly, recognizable name before adding it to the Domain. Make sure your DNS settings are pointing to the correct DNS Server for the domain. You have to have access to a Domain account that is part of the Domain Admins security group.

Joining a Machine To a Domain

Open Computer and click on the System Properties button.

Now click on the Advanced system settings link on the left hand side.

When the advanced system settings open, switch to the computer name tab.

Click on the change button, from here you can change your Computers Name to a more friendly name.

Now switch the radio button, in the bottom section, from Workgroup to Domain. This will make the text box become available.

Now type in the name of your domain, ours is howtogeek.local, but yours will be whatever you made it when you set up Active Directory.

When you hit enter, or click ok, you will be asked for the user name and password of a Domain Admin user account.

If you specify the correct credentials you will be welcomed to the Domain.