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Manually entering the DNS entries

We have a NT4 domain, mostly NT4 workstations and several Win2k workstations in our environment. Recently I have encountered problems with the Win2k workstations that for some reason users were not able to browse the web with either Internet Explorer or Netscape. IE would display an error saying, "The page can't be displayed.? However, users were able to ping other Internet servers from the Win2k boxes so the connection is fine.

To solve the problem, I had to manually enter our DNS server into the TCP/IP settings. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the Win2k machines are getting all the server settings from our DHCP servers properly (confirmed with ipconfig /all). This sounds like a DNS server problem but our DNS servers seem to be working just fine since this problem doesn't seem to affect our NT4 users. How do I fix it so I do not have to manually enter the DNS entries on all Win2k boxes?

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Check out KnowledgeBase article Q268674. It describes how the DHCP client service must be running to resolve DNS names. Could it be that the DHCP service on these clients somehow is stopping or being stopped? (Perhaps a logon script error.)

Are you getting any Event Log entries in the clients?

Does this happen immediately after restart or does it start happening later?

Does it affect all Windows 2000 clients or just a few?

Do you lose DNS resolution in your private network as well as the Internet?

Are you pointing the clients at the same DNS server when you statically map then as they get in the DHCP configuration packet?

This was first published in June 2001

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