Excerpt from error screen:

com4j.ExecutionException: com4j.ComException: 8007054b Failed to MkParseDisplayName : The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted. : .\com4j.cpp:217
	at com4j.ComThread.execute(ComThread.java:203)
	at com4j.Task.execute(Task.java:25)
	at com4j.COM4J.getObject(COM4J.java:256)
	at hudson.plugins.active_directory.ActiveDirectoryAuthenticationProvider.<init>(ActiveDirectoryAuthenticationProvider.java:46)

Installed Jenkins 1.509.1 service on a fresh Windows Server 2012 installation and tried turning on AD authentication. No idea if an AD server was even running, but I should be allowed to experiment right? Instead I got this error when I pressed Save from the security configuration screen, which is not very friendly. Should rather show an error in form validation etc.

Not even sure why these calls are being done from the constructor; seems to be unused except for logging.