dude have you ever heard of "... least administrative effort" ... well if not, look up for that term ... anyway, from my experience with AD (I can easily say impressive experience) seting up a DNS server on your own before seting up a AD can just lead you into a bunch of problems. Beside that, "Setting things up manually, you get a better idea of what is going on with your server/network" means really nothing when it comes to Ad installation, it's not a surgery, but a system that can be installed ONLY one way ... to install DNS you can use, imagine, ONLY one routine, not 2, just one, so better idea of what is going on with your server when installing DNS is sorry to say, but funny statement ... if it is to be done "your" way, dcrpmo wouldn't even try to install it, not just that, but Microsoft would reccommend installing DNS prior to running dcpromo which is not the case ... anyway to end meaningless discussion, you keep installing DNS manually, I will using dcpromo, and evebody is happy