Unable to resolve simple host names

Sorry forgot to add...

The reason you do that first bullet is so that when your machine tries to resolve a client it will append the primary dns suffix to the name.  

Good advice there. I did not have the DNS Suffix configured on the server. I am able to ping the simple host names from the server, but not from the clients.

The clients are pointing to the one and only DNS server, so I know that peice is correct.

Are you suggesting that I need to change each client DNS suffix in the computer name properties page?

You either need to change the DNS suffix on each machine, or they need to be part of the domain itself (which will default their DNS suffix to the domain they are a part of).

Yes that is correct and you will need to do that on all machines.

Brian

Ok great, that seems to be working perfectly.  I did have on elast follow up issue if you are able to help with that as well. I am attempting to add an A record for www.mywebdomain.com but it does not add it. It creates  a sub folder calle COM then another folder called MYWEBDOMAIN. Within that folder it creates an A record for www and points to the lcoal address i gave it.

I really just want to add a simple A record that points www.mywebdomain.com to a local address. Any ideas?

What it appears to be doing is creating a new domain under my current zone. I try to enter the a record for www.mywebdomain.com and it creates a new domain called COM and then a new domain called MYWEBDOMAIN. This makes no sense to me. SHouldn't I be able to have the DNS server resolve a full web address to a specific IP address without creating new domains under my current zone?

If your www host is the same domain internally as externally (ie. your internal domain is domain.com and so is your external domain) then you simply need a host record called www

If your internal and external domains are different, then you'll need to create a new forward lookup zone for mywebdomain.com and put a www host record there.  However, you'll also need to put any other hosts on mywebdomain.com in there as A records as well or you won't be able to get to them from internal (like ftp.mydomain.com).

that makes perfect sense. i tried it but still not working for some reason. We are not on a windows domain in this location. It is a small shop with maybe 15 users. The is the only server here. When i ping www.MYWEBDOMAIN.COM i get the externally hosted IP address (public), but when I ping www.MYWEBDOMAIN.COM.SERVERNAME i then get the correct internal IP resolution.

I did just as you suggested. I created a new forward lookup zone called MYWEBDOMAIN.COM and added the A record for www and pointed to the desired internal IP address. I really thought that would resolve it. But client PC's and the server both still resolve the WWW.MYWEBDOMAIN.COM to the public IP for some reason.

They may be getting it from their cache or even the DNS server's DNS cache.  On the server, do an ipconfig /flushdns, and in DNS admin right click on the server and choose "clear cache".  Then try again.

OK, I had to go back and change each client to append the new forward lookup zone name in the computer properties page. All is well now.

Thank you so much for all of your help. You really made my day. I wish i could award more points :)