Q:

Active Directory users not listed when trying to add users to SharePoint Foundation 2010

this was previously asked on serverfault by me:
https://serverfault.com/q/389357/121152

I'm running SharePoint Foundation 2010 on a Windows Server 2008 R2 and I'm having a problem adding users from our AD into SP groups. The server is already on the domain and I can log in with an AD account.
I can also see the full AD listing when accessing Central Administration. So I can add other site admins but not actual users. When trying to add a user on the site itself, I get this:
Example (I'm too low level to post images)
A search will pull up nothing as well. In all there are only 3 accounts: Mine, the system account and a SharePoint services account.
I have tried the solution from this forum but with no luck (the hotfix is 'not applicable to this computer')
Any suggestions?
EDIT: Ok, so users can access the site and are automatically logged in as their AD account. However, we cannot change their permissions or add them to any group until they have first visited the page.
It seems that SPF is adding the user from AD correctly but only when they visit the site initially. How would I perform a sync of the entire AD listing?

A:

Are you using a local account as the sharepoint services account? 
If you are, then sharepoint will not be able to traverse your active directory structure or request the information it needs via LDAP in order to populate the address book and so-on. 
This would explain why users can access the site via windows authentication, yet are still unable to manage permissions correctly. 
Hope this helps. 

