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DNS Problems with NT/2000

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5 replies

by pcapizzi

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Here is my problem, I am running a NT 4.0 Domain using Two NT 4.0 DNS servers, and 90% of my workstations are NT 4.0. We are testing W2K Pro on some of our Laptops & Desktops. All of the NT 4.0 Servers & Workstations are having NO problems with DNS Resolution. All of the W2K boxes that are using NT 4.0 DNS servers for resolution are having problems. If you try to hit an internal (Extranet) Web page from a NT 4.0 Box you will have no problems, but when you try hitting the same page from a W2K Pro box it will display a page unavailable

Now if you Ping the Host record by name you get nothing , but by IP address your ok. Its almost like the W2K boxes do not like to use NT 4.0 DNS servers.

If you dump the Host record in the local Host file your ok .

Does anyone have any Idea what could cause this ? I think it may be a Client side configuration issue.

Thanks
Paul

5 replies

by anomalus

I've never heard of W2K having problems with NT DNS so I don't think that's the issue.

Use ipconfig /all at the command prompt of the W2K clients. This should give you the DNS servers the client is currently configured to use amongst other info.If this shows the right DNS server first make sure you can ping the DNS servers by ip from the W2K clients.
ipconfig /displaydns would show you the DNS entries cached on your clients.
ipconfig /flushdns would clear the dns cache.

nslookup is good utility when battling dns problems. Check to see if you can resolve any names at all or if it's just specific names that are giving you problems.

Is the configuration of your W2K network connection identical to the NT network connection?

Hope this gets you closer to the heart of the problem.

by timwalsh

Win2K tends to be more finicky about DNS than NT4 was.

If you can resolve by IP address but not by name, I suspect that you don't have a reverse lookup zone configured in DNS. The forward lookup table is used to resolve an IP address to a host name. The reverse lookup zone is used to resolve a host name to a particular IP address.

One other mechanism that can be used for name resolution is WINS. If you are currently running WINS, do the Win2K computers know where the WINS server is - either from DHCP scope options or by entering the info in TCP/IP properties?

You need to look for differences in TCP/IP properties between the NT computers and the 2000 computers. You may be running NetBEUI on all the NT computers (usually installed by default) and not on the Win2K computers (usually not loaded by default.

Hope this helps.

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