Windows 2000 AD Server will no longer see internet or ping root hint

[kwolz]

AS of this morning the network was working fine. All of the clients (XP and Redhat 8.0) were able to get to the internet fine. The Active directory could see the internet fine as well. Then I started noticing that I could not access some links on a site. I tried the same site on the server with the same results. Within the hour - the server lost all DNS connectivity with the internet. I can manually set the DNS (to my internet DNS)on my workstation, but this need to be pointing to the server since it AD - and the server should at least be able to ping the default root hint servers - as it did when I first noticed this starting to happen. I have rebuilt the cache. The server can see my internal network by hostnames. I tried nslookup from the server and get:
Q:\>nslookup
*** Can't find server name for address 192.168.240.200: Server failed
Default servers are not available
default server unknown
Address: 192.168.240.200

I have tried adding a forwarding DNS with no success there either.

Everything worked fine this morning and for the last 5 months.

TIA Guy

 

[mattjurado]

Can you ping the root servers? Can you ping your ISPs DNS servers? Gateway?
Have you restarted the DNS server? Reboot the server only if its something you know your server does well.

Matt

 

[kwolz]

I can ping them by IP. I can't ping them (or anthing on the internet) by the hostname). I can ping any IP address - it just will not resolve any names except for those that are internal. The server has been rebooted - all un-needed services shut down. I am behind a router that is the gateway, but my workstations work if I point them to the router or the ISP DNS server.

Thanks.

 

[mattjurado]

1. Okay, and you did the following?
Open the DNS tool. Right click on the server name, and select properties. On the Fowarders tab, type in the addresses of your Internet DNS servers.

2. You rebuilt the cache... meaning? Have you tried renaming the netlogon.dns file? How about recreating your local zone?

Matt

 

[kwolz]

By rebuilding the cache - I copied over the cache.dns from the samples dir. Pretty much the same as deleting all of the name servers and typing them back in. Just following a Technet article.
I have added the ISP DNS to the forwarders w/o any success.

Will recreating my local zone cause any problems w/ my actice directory network. I had a lot of trouble with XP when I set it up because of DNS.

Thanks.

 

[mattjurado]

Its been my experience that recreating the zone does not cause any major problems... However, we are dealing with microsoft here... Search for .dns files, back them all up.

Matt

 

[sase]

Hrm.. Couple of thoughts.

1st.. TCP/IP properties.. make sure the primary dns setting (on th server) is to 127.0.0.1 .... which is local.


Obviously something is funky with the replies...

Right click on the DNS server in the snap in... Click on the logging tab.. check evertyhing.

Look at the queris in \winnt\system32\dns\dns.log (or ..\dns\backup\dns.log, after restart of server) to make sure everything is working all fine and dandy...

Reload the zones... and give it a try... but first try to debug what's going on.. see where the error is.. have you checked the event log?