Windows 2000 Server DNS Issue

Sounds like an issue with a reverse lookup zone in the DNS server.  I would look into your DNS servers settings and check the reverse lookup zone records.  Might just be a issue of issuing ipconfig /flushdns.

Kevin

Does the problem happen only with nslookup? Are you able to actually connect to remote computers via DNS?
By the way is your machine a DNS server?

I can connect to the server remotely from any other machine. The server is not running any DNS server and the nslookup issue on the server itself: it fails to resolve the TCP servers added in TCP/IP settings and hence doing an nslookup for any domain from the server fails. I tried ipconfig /flushdns but it did not work. The problem goes away as soon as the server is restarted.

--Nauman

The problem you're describing is indeed odd because nslookup has its own implementation of the DNS protocol (it does not use the gethostbyname() system call). The fact that two completely unrelated implementations of DNS makes thing a bit weird.
Let try another approach: When it happens next, try nslookuping using a different DNS server. Use this command:
nslookup www.google.com 192.9.9.3
Does this work?

Have you looked in the event logs to see if you are getting any errors?  When the problem goes away when you reboot is very odd.

As I'm sure you know nslookup reports an error if it can't reverse lookup the address of the dns server specified in it's tcpip properties.  It sounds simply like a comms issue, i.e. it can't comunicate with the dns servers you have defined -- are these are the ISP?

do as suggested above or

nslookup
server 158.43.128.1
www.yahoo.com.  (inc. the last period)

I would also suggest just some simple PINGs of the DNS servers you are using by IP address when it isn't working --in fact at that point can you PING anything on the internet (e.g. the above address I gave). Perhaps you lose the default gateway for some reason which is why you can get to the server from your other machines still?

Also might be worth checking the DNS client service and others haven't failed (and check the server event logs as suggested already)

Steve

It is still happening. I think I may need to reinstall Windows. Thanks for your inputs.

--Nauman.

Does the server have multiple network cards at all?  If so can you supply us output of ipconfig /all.  Did the above nslookup commands work or not when the comms had gone down btw?

The server has two network cards: one has local IP and one has WAN IP. None of the nslookup command work in this case. Nothing is in the eventlog. This server has SMTP service installed and when nslookup is failed, none of the e-mails are delivered. I am installing a local DNS server to see if it solves the issue.

--Nauman.

A bit about Dead Gateway Detection here:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0903.mspx

Thanks for the reply Steve. For one of the NIC, DHCP was enabled, I tried giving it a static IP. Lets see if it solves the issue.

Thanks,
Nauman.

Wow that was a long time ago!

Good luck!

Steve

yeah I know its been a long time :) We have not faced a lot of issue with the server since then...and I was not logging on to EE because of work...so yeah, lets see now :)

--Nauman.

I would like to see the original questioner come back, i think I gave a logical answer to why this may happen but it may or not be correct in this case of course.

Thanks for selecting my answer.... was that the issues in the end?