Name resolution issue after PDC went down.

[d1onysus]

I'm really lost on this issue and can really use any help.
The PDC froze the other night and I brought it back up the next morning. When it came back some workstation's couldn't ping the PDC and one of the BDCs by name. We have DNS setup on a separate server and DNS was functioning for all other servers except for those two. When you pinged the two "bad" servers you would get a 'unknown host'message. I did an NBTSTAT -N and there was a conflict between the two problem NT4 servers. I tried refreshing the table through nbtstat -RR and that didn't work. I then bounced the PDC again and the conflict disappeared. But certain workstations still can't see the two servers in Network Neighborhood and can't even search for them in Find---> Computers.

The workstations are NT4, Windows 95, and Windows 2000.
I also deleted and readded the servers in DNS with no luck.
It seems to me that it maybe the Computer Browser service instead of actual name resolution. I can ping by IP address always, and in one case I could ping by name with a hosts file, but when you go to find the computer in Network Neighborhood or do Find--->computer you get nothing.

Any Help would be appreciated.

 

[JensP]

Hi,
is the PDC on a different Subnet as the Clients? Have you checked if your Workstations are using the correct Wins-Server. On NT4, the Windows nameresolution works with Wins nor with DNS unless you make the tick by "Enable DND for Windows Resolution" on the Wins-Tab of your TCP/IP properties.

 

[Alshrim]

With the PDC being the holder of the SAM .. it can sometime take about 15 minutes to resolve all the names on the LAN before the PDC publishes them to the Browser Service.

Is it still acting up? Alshrim
System Administrator
MCSE, MCP+Internet

 

[d1onysus]

I think I figured some of it out. The DNS isn't resolving the common name. It was before and there were no changes, but now it's not. For example I can use nslookup to resolve 'mail.mydomain.com' but nslookup won't resolve just 'mail'. But DNS should resolve the name of the server with having to put in the FQDN right? I'm losing my mind here....Help!!

 

[Alshrim]

ONly if you have an alias called "mail" set up in the dns server. Alshrim
System Administrator
MCSE, MCP+Internet

 

[JMcAllister]

On the DNS tab in TCP/IP properties are a couple places to enter default domains to use for lookups. The first follows just after hostname, then at the bottom is Domain Suffix Search order..

If you entered mydomain.com for Domain, then entered mydomain1.com and mydomain2.com in the other box, when you ping 'mail' it would try to resolve mail.mydomain.com, then mail.mydomain1.com, then mail.mydomain2.com... until it sucessfully resolved an address.

Good luck,

~ jmcallister

 

[Alshrim]

nbtstat controls NetBios stats... not DNS ... so running this would not help you. This resets statistics given to you by your WINS server. It does not resolve FQDN .. that is the job of a DNS server.

So.. what i would do at this point .. is take the machine out of the domain .. and readd it! OR .. check your WINS server for tombstones on that machine.. delete the entries.. and reboot the server.

If it's a dns issue.. than you'll wanna rebuild the data files on your dns server ...

Alshrim
System Administrator
MCSE, MCP+Internet

 

[d1onysus]

It was actually a corruption in WINS after all. Once we cleared the WINS DB, it worked fine! thanks for all your help.