While rejoining one of my machines to the domain, I saw the following error:

The following error occurred attempting to join the domain

Logon Failure: The target account name is incorrect

which I am sure you can guess, was completely wrong as I’ve being using the domain and the account in question for years. Clearly, something was going on with the domain services.

While looking into the logs of my domain controllers, I noticed one DC with significant number of failures in DNS (in fact to the extent that the service wasn’t loading any zones) and consequently, Directory Service. I also looked into the System log and there were a few Kerberos errors as well.

This felt like a domain trust issue so I ran the command:

NETDOM RESETPWD /Server:<Bad Domain Controller Name> /UserD:<Domain Admin Username> /PasswordD:<Domain Admin Password>

Just also remember to stop the KDC Service (Kerberos Key Distribution Center Service) first as it will probably interfere with username mentioned in the account otherwise. It takes a few seconds but then returns with a success.

Once informed that the password has successfully been reset, I gave the server a reboot. With that, all DNS Zone errors disappeared, DNS management loaded fine and Directory Services also came up.

That looked promising so I retried joining the original machine to the domain, which worked as per normal so I thought of doing a quick note, in case you guys see it.

Hope this helps!