So it seems there are some problems with Domain Membership in Windows 7.
I formatted, installed and joined a Windows 7 RC1 x86 machine at home to the domain at home over the weekend, and me being me, I have quite a lot of GPO’s that apply.
After joining the clients to the domain, if you enter the username and password to logon, once the logon process begins, an error is shown that explorer.exe cannot start. There is a thread running on the TechNet forums for this issue.
Some of the posts on the TechNet forums seem to suggest the Restricted Groups component is at fault here, when trying to control the Administrators groups members on the client, however I don’t believe this is the issue.
For the client in question, I added a new OU called WindowsSeven and moved the client to this OU after setting the Block Policy Inheritance setting. After doing this the client logged in ok. After this I wanted to get the AV software deployed to the client, so I linked my software deployment GPO’s to the new OU, and at reboot the explorer.exe error returned.
I’ve since moved the client back down to Vista, but I will be building a Windows 7 VM to play with which policies may be causing the issues – Keeping you posted as always.