Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of mvselm
mvselm

asked on

DNS resolve on Win2000 client does not work

I am in the process of installing a new W2K SP2 system. All was working fine until I apparently made a mistake somewhere. DNS lookups worked fine. IE, outlook and SMB shares worked fine.

While I was debugging a printer performance issue I decided to install  the NetBEUI protocol to see if that had some impact. It had not so I removed it again. Since then I cannot do DNS queries. Only a ping to the SMB server works and a ping to my own local hostname. E.g. ping myhost works, ping server works. Ping server.mydomain.top does not work. Same for external domains.

The DNS server works and seems to be configured correctly in the W2K client. Actually this has not changed and worked before. A dns resolve works fine from other clients.

I've spend a lot of time figuring out what happened but can't find the answer. Could you give me a hint.

Marc van Selm
Avatar of Vick Vega
Vick Vega
Flag of Canada image

Hi,
Couple of questions first.
Does the server you installed is DC and storing Active Directory?
If not you can remove the DNS service and install it from scratch.
Don't forget to delete or rename the dns folder in system32.
Also install Service Pack to the system.
Avatar of mvselm
mvselm

ASKER

> Comment from Ronin
> Couple of questions first.

Actually I am installing a client. The DNS server was and still is fine (verified with another client). No AD is involved. The client just does not like to resolve except for the hostname (without domain) of the file/print server that I connect to (Samba by the way) and its own hostname (without domain). Pings to IP addresses work fine. Just the DNS lookups behave strange.

Marc
Did you added domain name in the search field at the advanced network configuration?
Avatar of mvselm

ASKER

The DNS domain name is actually configured in 2 places:
-  It is in the Advanced TCP/IP settings/DNS-tab: "Append these DNS suffixes in order".
-  It is also (when I am correct, the previous entry overrules) in System/Network identification/Properties/More/Primary DNS Suffix. This is also the same tab where I specified the workgroup.
Try flushing the local DNS cache and trying the ping again:

ipconfig /flushdns
SOLUTION
Avatar of ralonso
ralonso

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of mvselm

ASKER

Sorry guys,none of the above. I tried flushing the DNS cache with ipconfig /flushdns and the nbstat -R. The last command is not installed (at  least not in the search-path).  I assume becasue  the related protocol has been removed again. I also reapplied SP4.  Did not help either. I use a static IP address. I tried changing this. I tried removing the network services and protocols and reinstalling them. No result.... I  checked the DNS client service. Running.

So I did a network trace. Pings are clearly visible but when I do a nslookup, no traffic is send from the W2K client. This strikes me as odd... It is intriguing because I've seen this before on a colleague's workstation. Same symptoms (did not do the packet trace then). It went away more or less by itself (that bothers me because what do we do the next time...)

Thanks sofar... Marc
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Try putting the DNS Server address in the HOSTS file (winnt\system32\drivers\etc)

When you flushed the DNS did you re-register?  Are you using DDNS?  Check the DNS snap-in on the server and see if the client is in there.
Avatar of mvselm

ASKER

This seemed to do the trick (the nbtstat) . Mmmm interesting this W2K works. These are the things that you  can never recreate (did the same sequence before without problems) but just happen apparently...

Indeed if you replace the NIC the effect is similar. Now I put 1 and 1 tother with my collegue's workstation that did something similar. There the symptoms were the same. To prove that it was the computer and not the services on the LAN we used his Bluetooth + GPRS dialin access to the ISP. Before we did so we disconnected his LAN port (sensible security). This worked. Then we disconnected from GPRS and get back to the LAN. All was fine...

Thank you all for your help!