netdom join Error 53, Error 2, DNS is correct. Windows 2012 R2 doesn’t like /ou

We have been using a script for years that will join a Windows system to our domain.  Now with 2012 R2 it never executed.  And this was not a DNS issue.  Ping your DC’s with the friendly name from the system first and if they resolve you are good.

At first I thought was an issue with our 2012 R2 domain controllers.  Apparently after researching this I saw that a duplicate SPN check can cause this.  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3070083

Patch your DC’s this hotfix was incorporated into later patches so if your up-to-date then you should be fine.

Remove the /ou section of your netdom join statement.  It worked for us for years, but now it just throws a error every time.  And before you say anything I tried using CN for the computers section most of the time.  Our statement was:

netdom join $serverName /d:$Domain /ou:”OU=Computers,DC=cloud,DC=digitalsos,DC=com” /ud:SOS\joinUS /pd:$decrypted /reboot:20 >> $logfile

Now it’s just:

netdom join $serverName /d:$Domain /ud:joinUS /pd:$decrypted /reboot:20 >> $logfile

Hopefully you won’t throw away a week of your time chasing this down.