Question : PCs randomly unable to resolve server names

Hi,

I have a few users who keep experiencing the same problem.  They use a remote application and every now and then they lose the connection.  When testing from the machine with the issue I discovered that I could not ping the name of the server, however, I could ping the IP.

So, I put this down to a DNS issue.  I tried flushing the cache and found that will resolve the issue about 5% of the time.  To resolve it 100% of the time I have to manually restart the "DNS Client" service.

I have tried adding a key called MaxNegativeCacheTtl to the registry in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters with a value of 0 - this is to stop the machine storing negative DNS entries but this did not seem to stop it.

What is strange is it only appears to be 3 users who regularly have this issue.  They work in the same department, so I started thinking it could be something to do with the network in that office - however, once a week they will go to a different office and use a different PC.  They still get the problem.

So, now I'm thinking it could be profile related!?!?!?  I recreated their profiles and the problem seemed to go away for a couple of days but now it is back in full effect!

The users do not have admin rights so can't restart the service themselves and, understandably are getting quite annoyed with having to call me every time to do it for them.

Does any of this make sense to anyone? :-)  Any help would be greatly appreciated ... and rewarded with lots of points!

Many thanks,

Giles

Answer : PCs randomly unable to resolve server names

Just guessing but - do you have a secondary DNS IP address listed on the client stack?  Is it an active server?  How about bad hosts entries?

Try NSLOOKUP from one of the clients that can no longer ping by IP and see what it reports.