MacOS – How to join an Active Directory domain in Lion

Bear in mind that interactive user logons are not the only thing that count as failed logons when it comes to Active Directory account locks. Services that are set to run as a network user and network resources with saved logins can rack up the failed logon count and lock the account.

Hobs' comment to your question is the direction you should head. Check the Security log on the domain controller that the computer authenticates against and you should get the information that you need as far as the source of the failed logons. The fact that it works on other computers only reinforces this. Something is definitely failing, it's just a matter of finding what.

Well, I figured it out! Our Active Directory is very large. I'm actually only technically a container admin deep within a large tree of Colleges within the University so I believe that had something to do with it.

Instead of using the easy quick Join interface I had to open up Directory Utility and join this way.

When I pressed 'Bind' I typed in the direct OU path for my particular Container that my machine should be placed in and it let me bind.

I don't have this issue on Windows but Mac is needing it to be specifically assigned to that OU before my level of authority will allow me to add the Mac.

I hope this helps someone!