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Browse domain via UNC goes to non-domain controller

On Windows XP and Windows 2003 server when we go do a Start/Run and then UNC to our domain name. "\\DOMAIN.COM" Some computers return the shares of a domain controller which is what I would expect. However some computers bring up the shares on a non-domain controller, it is seems these non-domain controllers that are returned are servers that were demoted from domain controller and do not show up as domain controllers in Active Directory Users and Computers.
This is causing us issues with group policy and when the computers try to update policies and go through the UNC path to find them is does not when the computer connects to a non-domain controller as the polies are not there as there is no sysvol share.
I am not sure why the network thinks these demoted servers are domain controllers in some way.

Thanks for any help with this!

kpiller

ASKER

I was looking through DNS and notice I have these demoted domain controllers setup as NAME SERVERS as they are still dns servers. Would having them setup as name servers cause this?
Thanks

kpiller

ASKER

When I do a nslookup on my domain name it gives me a list of IP addresses and those appear to be from Host records in DNS that are named "Same as parent folder". When demoting the domain controllers I did not clean up any of these records but it appears I will just need to remove the non-domain controller records to fix this. Along with that should I remove the name servers that are not domain controllers?

I think cleaning up those records may fix my issue but if someone could explain this to me a little that would probably be helpful to me.

Thanks

benhanson

Are you using DFS?

Fatal_Exception

From your first comment, I would have suggested that DNS is the issue here.. you need to clean up those records... perhaps running dcdiag /fix on this server, or flushing the DNS cache, then re-registering it would help..

BTW: dcdiag needs to be downloaded first.. :)

FE

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Chris Dent

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Fatal_Exception

Now, that is an excellent idea, Chris... should have thought of this myself!

Chris Dent

It's quite unusual to notice something you've forgotten, we'll just have to see if it helps :)

Chris

kpiller

ASKER

Thanks for the replies.

I did end up clearing the records up those host records manually and that does appear to have taken care of my problem with browsing through UNC to the domain.

I have setup aging and scavenging also which will hopefully keep it cleaned up better.

Thanks for all the info and help.
Karl