DNS Issues

[Alizay]

First and foremost, I'm a serious newbie when it comes to Windows Server 2003. Thank God for this forum, and the helpful people on it.

I'm having a problem with the DNS, or at least I think its the DNS.

The DC was installed on the Server, and the DNS. The problem is, I think I may have removed something, because now I cannot ping the domain "hq.whatever.com"

I cannot ping it from the server or any of the workstations that I managed to attach to the domain when I initially created it.

I was once able to ping "hq" in the beginning, but now I cannot. I can however ping the server that its on "main", or any of the other servers as well.

What should I do?

[FAT64]

To check if DNS is working, I would use the NSLOOKUP function:

C:\>NSLOOKUP hq.whatever.com

You could try deleting the local DNS cache, it might be corrupt:

C:\>IPCONFIG /FLUSHDNS

Edited January 25, 2007 by FAT64

[eyeball]

check your ipconfiguration and make sure you have the correct DNS server specified.

do an nslookup as mentioned.

restart the dns service or the whole server

manually check in the forward and reverse zones in DNS for A and PTR records respectively

if these exist technically all should work as long as the entries in them are correct.

hope this helps

[Alizay]

Checked the forward and reverse zones, they seem okay.

Stopped and restarted the service, still nothing.

I even tried taking a computer off the "so called" domain, and trying to add it back on, but it cannot locate HQ.

What else can I try?

Should I uninstall and reinstall the DNS and DC?

[FAT64]

Maybe this is too obvious but ...

Have you entered the DNS server IP address in the TCP/IP settings of the client PC?

It seems a little extreme to demote your DC back to a server and reinstall DNS. Did you configure your server manually or just run DCPROMO?

I would wait a while to see if anyone here has any other ideas first.

What was the outcome of the NSLOOKUP?

Edited January 25, 2007 by FAT64

[nmX.Memnoch]

Have you entered the DNS server IP address in the TCP/IP settings of the client PC?

I was about to ask that as well.

Another thing to check is that you have the 127.0.0.1 (or the server's IP) as the DNS entry in the TCP/IP settings on the server.