I'm trying to resolve some issues with computers not obtaining Group Policies properly, and in the SBS Console windows I noticed that the status of a lot of our workstations is Unknown, so there is very little I can do with them remotely. First part of the question, is it normal to have so many unknown machines (as opposed to Online/Offline), as I would say about 30% of our computers are showing that.
One machine in particular has the status message of, "Unknown - No computer is mapped to this computer account (dnsHostName is empty). I've tried to Google this, but with no luck.
Any thoughts?
Pick one workstation & review the Event logs to see exactly what the errors are. Without that info there isn't much to go on. In general GP errors are most often related to DNS or the firewall: static IP's & incorrect DNS settings on wkstns, incorrect DNS settings in the DHCP scope, incorrect or missing SRV or A records in the DNS zone and/or firewall issues on the wkstn preventing connections from the server.
The one machine that is not mapped may need to be removed and rejoined to the domain if you can't find anything obviously wrong.
GP issues can be more complicated and running GP Results from GP Mgmt on the SBS box can provide more info on what policies are expected to be applied but you'll want to make sure the fundamentals are correct first.