windows 2000, DNS server

As the message is suggesting, the DNS server has received an invalid domain name. By invalid it means that it contains invalid characters. MS DNS only supports 0-9, a-z, A-Z, . (dot), and - (hyphen) as part of a domain name. Some other DNS servers may not strictly enforce RFC 952 (DOD INTERNET HOST TABLE SPECIFICATION) so invalid names reach the DNS server and the 5504 message is recorded.  Usually this happens when Forwarders are used by the DNS server. Microsoft suggested to one user to turn off the forwarder in order to eliminate these messages. There used to be a Knowledge Base article "Q246797 - DNS EVENT IDS 5504, 9999, AND 5000 FILL EVENT VIEWER" but is no longer available.
Another condition that may generated these messages is when the Internet connection is saturated or not working properly (losing packets). Because of the poor Internet connection, the DNS may receive incomplete or corrupted data and 5504 is generated.

Also, I would suggest you update your OS to the latest SP.

Links
Checkout what MS has to say about this error (see the workarround):
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314803

Hope that helped

Cyber

Good Morning,

I could cut and paste an article however, the link below explains your situation very well.  Almost any error that shows up in the event log can be researched at http://eventid.net.  

http://eventid.net/display.asp?eventid=5504&eventno=642&source=DNS&phase=1

Hope this helps.

Lyle

Cyber-Dude's post was not up before I posted...Kudos!!!  His article sums it up pretty good.  However, http://eventid.net is still an excellent resource for starting your research on event log errors.

Lyle

hi, now what the real implications of stopping the fowarder on the dns server
thanks a lot

If you have an external DNS server and all workstations on your network are configured to use YOUR DNS, it means that all requests to the external DNS made by your server will not carried out thus causing, in some cases, to the inability of workstations to resolve DNS names in conjuction to IP addreses. That is unless your server is indeed the main and full DNS server and you dont need the assist of an external DNS server to do the resolving job.

Cyber

Well put Cyber!!

Lyle

It is usually require the Server to enable the forwarder to forward the DNS query when you have XP machine in your domain. It is because in order to let the Window XP to join to the domain, you need to point the DNS server to the internal DNS server to locate the Domain Controller. So when XP machine want to surf internet, it require a external DNS to resolve the Internet Name to IP address. This is why you require the Internal DNS server to enable the forwarder.

Thanks

Lemon

 

i can not stop the forwarding
so am i stuck to with those errors on the dns server?

Cyber's answers sounded excellent.  Give him the points.  If there is any objections splite em'!

Lyle