So the NPM server can talk to AD as shown below-

it accepts the credentials of the service account that was specifically created for solarwinds. But when i go under here-

Then click "ADD NEW GROUP ACCOUNT" upon entering the same service account credentials and search for an AD group name it r eturns blank-

We have already verified that this group exists, and also verified that the service account being used has the required permission to view all AD groups (tested this separately) and it also does not show every other AD group, when i try to search for other random groups it still returns blank so yeah cant see any groups whatsoever.
Main goal is to just give SolarWinds access to only the network team which is why i opted for AD.
I have also confirmed that there are no ACLs on the core switch which is doing the routing for this traffic to the AD server from SolarWinds. So no blocks of any kind going on.
Thank you.