[bdgray]

Hello all,

I have a frustrating issue that I am trying to resolve. I have Googled this to death and while I think I understand the problem, I cannot seem to resolve it.

I have a new laptop running Windows 7 Professional OS. I use this laptop to connect to a RAS where I access my company's Intranet. My internet access comes via Cable modem through a wireless router and into my laptop via my wireless adapter. My RAS connection is a simple PPTP connection using Microsoft's "Set up a network connection" wizard. All very basic.

When I am VPN'd into our system I have no problem accessing a standard internal URL (intranet.companyXYZ.com). However I am unable to access any file servers or web applications that use a different URL format - for example http:// webapps / SAMS / ProductList.aspx.

Having researched this online, I believe the problem has to do with the binding order of my Network adapters. The root cause as I understand it is that DNS is pulled from my ISP rather than our company's internal DNS servers. I don't quite understand this. How is my ISP's DNS resolving "intranet.companyxyz.com" but not resolving "webapps/SAMS/Productlist.aspx"?

Here is my uneducated guess on this but I'm not sure if this is correct or if it is part of the problem. My guess is that our corporate DNS server is the primary DNS (it is the first DNS shown when I run ipconfig /all). However I suspect that somehow it recognizes the intranet.companyxyz.com URL but does not recognize the non ".com" URLs associated with file servers and web apps. So in these instances DNS resolution falls to the next option in my TCP/IP binding order (my ISP).

To resolve this I have attempted multiple fixes including:

1. Changing the binding order via Regedit in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Linkage". To do this I first located the Setting ID by going into CMD and typing "wmic nicconfig get Description,Setting ID". Once I had the setting ID I first moved the Wireless NIC to the top of the list. When that didn't work I tried moving the "Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter" to the top. This also failed.
2. Changing the binding order via the Advanced Settings menu within Adapter Settings
3. Manually adjusting the Interface metrics of the "Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter" to 20 and the Wireless NIC to 30.
4. Selected and deselected "Use Remote Access Default Gateway" to see if this was a split tunneling problem. Neither option worked.
5. Did all of the above within Windows XP Mode (including connecting to the Internet directly via my wireless NA rather than via NAT). This was done to see if the problem was specific to Windows 7. No luck.

None of these have worked and I am out of ideas. Let me add that I am not a Network Administrator so some of my fixes may be misdirected. I am reasonably smart guy who has been Googling these fixes.

I should add that I experienced this exact problem before on my previous laptop (running XP). The fix then was to move \Device\NdisWanIp to the top of the TCP/IP linkage binding order. When I was running XP this solved the problem instantly. Now when I've experienced similar symptoms in Windows 7, this fix doesn't work (note: NdisWanIp doesn't exist in Windows 7, I have instead ugly Setting IDs that look more like a MAC address).

Lastly, my problem is compounded by the fact that I'm using a BYOPC that my company allows but will not support. This was the agreement we struck when I demanded a new laptop and was told I could either continue with my POS corporate-issued laptop or buy one myself. Now that I'm $2,000 into this adventure I'm clearly not going back to the company issued laptop that I am trying to replace.

I would greatly appreciate thoughts on how to resolve this. I'm out of ideas and beginning to feel like my expensive foray into unsupported hardware/software my have been a huge mistake.

Thank you,
Brian