From WINS to DNS woes on NT 4.0

We have a network where computer name are all unique, but unfortunately I don’t know if the DNS hostnames are all unique. We recently removed WINS from our NT server and are now solely relying on a registered DNS server that also provides our internet access.

After removing WINS, some users cannot get ip address from our dhcp server. Yet if I go to winipcfg, I can release and renew manually and it works.

The problem seems that when the user boots, they can’t get an ip address from our dhcp server, but if they logon locally, then release/renew, THEN they can logon to the network. This seems weird, and I was wondering if anyone had ideas what?s wrong?

Thanks!