I received an error "Unable to load specified offline registry hive" when attempting to join a Windows-container to my domain. Can you help me understand why?

Question

I have created a Windows container as a development environment, then I can create another account inside this container for my test. Now, I want to manage these accounts inside the container to manage some domain users from the Active Directory server 2019. I have tried to join a Windows container to my domain with a lot of ways from the Internet to manage these container users from the AD server. But I got an error "Unable to load specified offline registry hive". Why we cannot join the Windows container to any domain? And how can we resolve the error? Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

Hello Thanh Du Quoc,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community forum.

You can try the possible solutions in the two similar threads.

Unable to load the specified offline registry hive when rejoining the domain | Microsoft Learn

Cannot join Windows10 desktop to 2012 R2 domain - Unable to load specified offline registry hive - Microsoft Q&A

I hope the information above is helpful.

If you have any question or concern, please feel free to let us know.

Best Regards,
Daisy Zhou

Answer 2

Hello Thanh Du Quoc,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community forum.

You can try the possible solutions in the two similar threads.

Unable to load the specified offline registry hive when rejoining the domain | Microsoft Learn

Cannot join Windows10 desktop to 2012 R2 domain - Unable to load specified offline registry hive - Microsoft Q&A

I hope the information above is helpful.

If you have any question or concern, please feel free to let us know.

Best Regards,
Daisy Zhou

Hi @Daisy Zhou,

Thank you for your response. It appears that some links support the normal Windows operating system. In my context, my issue appeared when I used Windows containers to join domains http://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/manage-containers/container-base-images.My container does not contain the Offreg.dll library, which would explain the error "Unable to load specified offline registry hive". How do think about that? Let me know if you have some documents to install an Offreg.dll inside a windows container.

Thanks a lot.

Answer 3

Hello Thanh Du Quoc,

Good day!

What operating system version of your Windows Container?

The offline registry library is provided as a binary redistributable dynamic-link library (DLL). This library runs on the following versions of Windows:

Windows Server 2016 Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows Server 2012 R2 Windows 8 Windows Server 2012 Windows 7 Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2008 Windows Vista

Applications should link to Offreg.dll using dynamic linking.

Offreg.dll is provided in the Windows Driver Kit (WDK) for Windows 10 and earlier versions of the Windows operating system.

Offline Registry Library - Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn

Best Regards,
Daisy Zhou

Answer 4

Hi Daisy Zhou,

Have a good day!

We are using this image mcr.microsoft.com/windows/servercore:ltsc2019 (LTSC), which means Windows Server Core 2019 LTSC (https://hub.docker.com/_/microsoft-windows-servercore). Also, I have a physical Windows Server 2019 with the same OS version in container, where the Offlreg.dll has been found in System32 directory. However, the same thing is not correct in the Windows Container version I mentioned above.

The issue is still under discussion.

Best Regards,

Thanh Du

Answer 5

Hello Thanh Du Quoc,

Good day!

So if you install the same OS on these server versions, then only LTSC version has no such Offreg.dll, right?
Windows Server Core 2019 LTSC
Windows Server 2019 LTSC

Windows Server 2019 datacenter

Windows Server datacenter Core 2019
Windows Server 2019 standard

Windows Server standard Core 2019

If so, maybe it is caused by LTSC.

Best Regards,
Daisy Zhou