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DNS Problems in Windows 2000

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by mojeda 1 view

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I am the administrator of a small (5 computers) office network. We have a Windows 2000 server and 4 Windows 2000 Professional workstations. We have access to the internet through a DSL router. All our PCs, including the server have static IP addresses. We have two external DNS addresses (our ISP) and one internal DNS address (our server)listed as our preferred DNS servers under TCP/IP Properties.

When the workstations are first turned on at the begining of the day everything works fine for acouple of hours. After that, the workstations have trouble accessing any web site in the internet (DNS name resolution seems to quit working). My temporary solution is to go to "Local Area Connection Properties", select TCP/IP Properties, select theDNS tab and just shuffle around the order of the DNS servers listed. It doesn't matter which one I put first or last, it just matters that I make a change and select OK. After doing this the workstation goes back to normal and the browser can do name resolution fine again.

I have checked everything I can think of, but I cannot figure out what causes this to happen. I shouldn't have to keep shuffling around the DNS server order. Please help.

8 replies

by beermonster

Hi,
You seem to be under the impression that your workstations will query the first server in their DNS server list, and if that can't resolve the address then they will go on to query the second. I'm afraid that is NOT the case. Alternate DNSservers are only consulted if the servers above them in the list are not available (sounds bizarre I know). If the first server is up, and returns a host not found then thats where your query ends. I will copy in below an answer I gave on this site recently which might help you configure your DNS correctly, note that if you really want to use your ISP's servers you can add them as forwarders rather than adding root hint servers (see below). As for the symptoms you are getting, this might revolve the first DNS server in your list (perhaps an ISP's server) becoming unavailable for some reason, thus causing your clients to query your internal server (which would be unaware of external addresses). reshuffling your DNS list and moving another ISP server to the top would allow your clients to resolve external addresses again. Note that if your clients were using your ISP's DNS for resolution, they would still be able to resolve local addresses by broadcast (although this would be slower).

by beermonster

I assume you have a 2000 dns server, and you want to query exterior addresses. On your 2000 dns server, in the dns pane, you will see a zone folder named simply . (IE full stop, or if you are American a period). This represents the "root" domain - it works like this, the actual FQDN for a domain is
mychilddomain.myparentdomain.com. (NOTE the full stop at the end). the final full stop says that there is nothing higher in the namespace, we (users, admins etc) don't see or use that full stop because it is handled \ appended by the software 'behind the scenes'. The full stop folder in DNS is telling your dns server that it is authorative for the "." namespace, IE that it is the highest DNS server in the land.Whenever you type in an exteriorDNS \ URL, your server looks at the full stop at the end (over which it believes it has authority), looks at the "." folder and sees that it's empty, and returns a host not found. All you need to do is delete the "." folder. What will happen then isthat your dns server will activate the 'root hints' tab, which at the moment should be greyed out. Into root hints it will load the cache.dns file,(from system32\dns\samples) which lists the root servers in use on the internet. Now, when you attemptto resolve an fqdn, if the name can't be resolved on your DNS servers, it will be forwarded onto the Internet root servers. This cut's out your ISP's server, which would simply forward your queries to the same root servers anyway...

I hope this helps : )

by swetbak

I had the very same problem. I was losing internet connection every couple hours or so. Either shuffling the DNS entries or disabling then enabling the network connection got the connection back. Your solution can be found in Article Q291382 on Microsoft website about faq's on common mistakes setting up DNS.

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