Scenario: A Citrix Administrator creates a new master image to be used with Machine Creation Services. When the administrator creates a new machine catalog from this master image, the newly created…

Sysprep is not required for MCS deployments because MCS internally handles unique SID and machine identity generation during the provisioning workflow.

Inability to resolve Delivery Controller FQDNs would cause VDA registration failures, not domain join failures, and is not the root cause described here.

Inability to contact the AD domain controller is a network-level concern and a secondary issue - the primary cause is that the master image itself was never domain-joined before machines were provisioned from it.

MCS provisions new machines by cloning the master image, which includes its domain membership configuration. If the master image is not a member of the domain before the catalog is created, the cloned machines have no domain account context to leverage during the join process. This is a fundamental prerequisite for MCS-based provisioning to successfully place machines in Active Directory.