Microsoft warned IT admins that some Windows Server 2025 domain controllers (DCs) might become inaccessible after a restart, causing apps and services to fail or remain unreachable.
As the company explained, this is caused by the servers loading the standard firewall profile instead of the domain firewall ones after rebooting.
“Windows Server 2025 domain controllers (such as servers hosting the Active Directory domain controller role) might not manage network traffic correctly following a restart,” Microsoft said in a Friday Windows release health dashboard update.
“As a result, Windows Server 2025 domain controllers may not be accessible on the domain network, or are incorrectly accessible over ports and protocols which should otherwise be prevented by the domain firewall profile.”
Because of this known issue, services and applications running on affected DC servers or remote devices may fail or become unreachable for other endpoints and servers on the network.
Workaround available
Microsoft also pointed out that this can be addressed by manually restarting the network adapter on impacted servers using various methods, including the following PowerShell command: Restart-NetAdapter *.
However, it’s also important to note that admins must restart the network adapter after every reboot because this known issue triggers whenever the domain controller is restarted.
To work around this, Microsoft advised creating a scheduled task to automatically restart the network adapter whenever the DC server is rebooted.
Redmond said that its engineers are working on a permanent fix for this issue that will be rolled out with a future update.
Earlier this month, Microsoft warned that some Windows users might be unable to log into their accounts using Windows Hello after installing the KB5055523 April 2025 security update.
Microsoft also fixed another KB5055523 issue, which caused authentication issues when Credential Guard was enabled on systems using the Kerberos PKINIT pre-auth security protocol.
