Matthew Clifford (9/30/2009)
I spent two days trying to figure out a solution to this problem. My problem was my computer name. It was 16 characters and server 2008 net bios will only read up to 15. As soon as I renamed my PC to be under 15 characters, rebooted and joined the domain. Service start perfectly.
thanks for mentioning the solution. that those limits still exist is easily overlooked, surprising and unexpected probably.