Weird dns Problems

[suzreid]

I've been having some weird DNS problems since upgrading to broadband.

My initial problem (posted somewhere on here) was that I couldn't resolve urls with IE. I couldn't even ping the url. Pinging and accessing web pages using the IP addresses was no problem.

I managed to solve this problem by adding a dns suffix (instead of the default DNS IP address). This works fine until I reboot the machine. Then I'm back to the initial problem. The dns suffix is still in the list but will not resolve. The only way I can get it to resolve is to add a different dns suffix. Deleting the one that's there and adding it again makes no difference unless I reboot in between.

Any suggestions on how to solve this problem? I have logged it with the ISP but they haven't seen this before and I don't hold out much hope.

Suz

 

[polymath5]

Well it sure sounds like a DNS issue. What OS are you running?

I'm assuming you don't have a hosts file sitting somewhere and that you've done an ipconfig /release /renew ?

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Mens et Manus
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[suzreid]

I'm running Win 2000 Pro SP2.

Yup, done everything you have suggested and I don't have a hosts file for it to use.

Suz

 

[polymath5]

Hi Suz,

You might try uninstalling TCP/IP and reinstalling it. I've seen this fix DNS weirdness. To be truthful I don't know exactly 'what' setting/stack it corrected, but that did it. Also you might try SP3.

Just to be sure, you're not on LAN at work. It's a single computer sitting at home going directly to the broadband modem? I'm trying to get a handle on your topology. Do you have anything like zone alarm or other firewall or NAT device running? Are all IP settings coming from your ISP?

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Mens et Manus
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[polymath5]

You might also want to try
ipconfig /displaydns and see if anything is odd. Then flush the cache with ipconfig /flushdns

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Mens et Manus
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[homeadmin]

Suz --

Did you ever resolve this problem? I see something similar. I am running Win XP Pro and sometimes IE will not be able to load a URL. Even while IE is having trouble, I can get the IP address of the URL from nslookup and ping the address directly. Ping of the URL does not work. After a few minutes (maybe 1-3) the problem clears up.

Some other facts:

- this problem used to be much worse when I was connected using dialup. Now I have DSL. I see the problem less frequently and it seems to resolve itself faster.

- because I saw the problem when I was using dialup I am assuming that the cause of the problem is local to the machine and not elsewhere. Just in case: I am connected via 802.11b to a Linksys router/wap in turn connected to the DSL modem.

- I have a local firewall with DNS traffic cleared in both directions. Again, because the problem is transitory I assume that the static configurations of all other software are not implicated.

- Finally, the problem seems to occur most frequently if I have walked away from the machine for some period (>= 10 min?) and then come back to it.

Any insight appreciated,

Gary