Question : Clients not updating their DNS records after network address change

We recently changed our network address from 192.168.1.0 to 10.2.0.0. Since then, DHCP clients have not been updating their record in DNS.

We have two DCs and DNS is AD Integrated. There is a single forward lookup zone. The domain is 2003 functional level. There is a single DHCP scope hosted on one of the DCs. The  DHCP server is set to update clients automatically. Most of the clients are XP Pro, some W2K, so should be updating on their own anyway.

All of my statically addresses servers have successfully updated their DNS entry automatically, but none of the DHCP clients have. I did successfully update one DHCP client by IPCONFIG /RegisterDNS. But none of the clients are doing it on their own.

Everything was working fine before the switchover. I initially forgot to authorize the new DHCP scope, but corrected this about 24 hours ago and was hoping that would solve my problem - but it did not.

Answer : Clients not updating their DNS records after network address change

I found the problem. When we set up the new DHCP scope at HQ, we entered in incorrect username/password in the "credentials" setting in the DHCP properties.

In fact, you don't want to set these credentials at all unless necessary. When I changed the credentials to the correct username and password of the Domain Admin, it worked fine. Then when I removed all info, it continued to work fine.

So to make the story short - we should never have put anything in the credentials area - it works fine without this info - I suppose using the local system account. We screwed things up by putting info in there in the first place.

Here is how you get to the settings I'm talking about on a W2K3 server:
Open the DHCP Console
Expand the server
Right Click on the server, not the scope
Go to the "Advanced" tab
Click Credentials