Troubleshoot WINS/DNS

[sxie]

We were asked to assist troubleshooting a small network setup where there is 1 win2k with AD, DNS, WINS, DHCP. The problems users are having include: 1.not able to change password, they get "domain controller can not be located", 2. can't see local printer being shared, 3. can't join computer to the domain, they get message "domain controller can't be located". 4. In explorer, they can not see the server when browsing.

Here is what we did:
Check the event log. Directory services are fine; found a couple of workstations with computer browser turned on and it was turned off at our request; Found some error on EVENT ID 7063 - "DNS server is configured to forward to a non-recursive DNS server at xxx.xx.xx.xx. DNS servers in forwarder list MUST be configured to process recursive queries..."; Attempted to check WINS via Admin Tools and got a big red "x" on the server icon; checked to make sure the WINS service is running and we were able to stop and start the service, but still could not manage WINS. Attempted to manually recreate the WINS db and even reinstalled WINS, still could not manage WINS.

Could you please advise on how you would go about troubleshooting this type of problems?

Thanks!!

 

[pollux0]

can you ping the domain name of your domain

c:\>ping mydomain.com

if so, is it the correct ip address of the domain controller?

is the primary dns zone for your domain set to dynamic updates? The ips might not be updating properly

theoretically, if you only have w2k in the network, you only need dns(i am not 100% sure about this statement)

 

[sxie]

Thanks for the advise. I am fairly certain that we can ping and resolve the domain.com on their network. I will have the onsite contact check the DNS zone to see if it is set for dynamic updates. Anything else we should look into?