Windows logon takes a long time

I have encountered this problem when configuring new machines to join a domain. The problem occurs when you try to log on to a computer which just restarted after joining to a domain, then you click the drop down menu to change the logon domain, a dialog is prompted: “Please wait while the domain list is created” and it hangs on forever.

To come out of the waiting loop, just press Ctrl-Alt-Del, select the desired domain, then the dialog is prompted again and press Ctrl-Alt-Del again to type in password to log in to that domain.

Basically the problem is a DNS issue. If the DNS of the system is not pointing to the DNS Server which includes a record of the domain, then it hangs on and does nothing. This is usually the case if we specify the DNS server as public internet servers rather than our own internal domain DNS server. So to solve this problem, just logon with the local administrator account and change the DNS address to the one which specifiesthe domain in its records.