in a mess can't rejoin domain

[Rich]

Hello all,

I have posted this here since the error message I keep receiving is can not
find network path when trying to rejoin a domain, and the help files keep
pointing to dns problems, problem is as far as I can see dns is set up
correctly obviously this is not the case otherwise I would not keep getting
the error

The problems with slow logons etc started when we got an adsl router, and
originally we had win 2000 server as a dhcp and dns server, now we have the
router doing the dhcp and 2000 doing dns, this is where I think the problem
lies.

problem was when we added our isp dns addresses to the forwaders on 2000 all
seemed fine, apart from we kept getting intermittent problems where we got
error messages stating that it could not find our isp mail server, this was
odd since internet was fine and we could ping by hostname to any machine and
it was fine.

Now my understanding is that if our dns server has a forwarder to our isp
dns this should be enough and all we require on the client machines is the
ip address of our dns server and not the isp dns aswell?, we could get away
qith obtaining dns automatically I guess if 2000 was serving those as well
but it is not our router is doing this right now.

2000 is running with active directory, so when we set up dns on it we opted
for storing the information in active directory rather than primary, was
this correct?

how is the best way to set up dhcp and dns with a domain controller and
router?

We do not have a sys admin as such in our office there are only 5 of us, and
we normally manage fine until the router was installed, our isp have
confirmed there is not a problem with our adsl connection and it must be at
our end?

maybe we are setting up forwarder incorrectly, should we not be putting our
isp dns addresses here should it be our routers ip address instead?

Any help appreciated, as right now, we need to join a machine we removed
from the domain earlier, but cant get it back in now

thanks in advance

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Hello all,

I have posted this here since the error message I keep receiving is
can not find network path when trying to rejoin a domain, and the
help files keep pointing to dns problems, problem is as far as I can
see dns is set up correctly obviously this is not the case otherwise
I would not keep getting the error

The problems with slow logons etc started when we got an adsl router,
and originally we had win 2000 server as a dhcp and dns server, now
we have the router doing the dhcp and 2000 doing dns, this is where I
think the problem lies.

problem was when we added our isp dns addresses to the forwaders on
2000 all seemed fine, apart from we kept getting intermittent
problems where we got error messages stating that it could not find
our isp mail server, this was odd since internet was fine and we
could ping by hostname to any machine and it was fine.

You had it right - no external IPs in any workstation/server's IP config for
DNS.....

Now my understanding is that if our dns server has a forwarder to our
isp dns this should be enough and all we require on the client
machines is the ip address of our dns server and not the isp dns
aswell?, we could get away qith obtaining dns automatically I guess
if 2000 was serving those as well but it is not our router is doing
this right now.

Well, you can probably tell your router's DHCP server to dish out whatever
you like, but you are better off having your 2k/AD server act as the DHCP
server. Tends to work better.

2000 is running with active directory, so when we set up dns on it we
opted for storing the information in active directory rather than
primary, was this correct?
Yep.

how is the best way to set up dhcp and dns with a domain controller
and router?

We do not have a sys admin as such in our office there are only 5 of
us, and we normally manage fine until the router was installed, our
isp have confirmed there is not a problem with our adsl connection
and it must be at our end?

OT, but if you just have an ADSL router, you probably don't have a
firewall - NAT alone isn't really good enough. You can pick up a cheap and
cheerful firewall appliance these days - stick it between your DSL router &
your switch/hub.

 

[Rich]

You had it right - no external IPs in any workstation/server's IP config for

Well, you can probably tell your router's DHCP server to dish out whatever
you like, but you are better off having your 2k/AD server act as the DHCP
server. Tends to work better.

Yes thank you, this solved the problem, switched of dhcp on router, and set
it back up on win2k server, and now point the forwarders to our isp dns ip
addresses and the workstations dns to the win2k server, we also checked the
boxes in client machines about adding parent suffixes to primary dns and
register this connections address in dns, and this worked logons are very
fast, and accessing network drives is faster too.

Thanks for the help, checking the register computer ip address in dns is
obviously important, though it seemed to cause problems when using router
dhcp, all is fixed thanks very much

OT, but if you just have an ADSL router, you probably don't have a
firewall - NAT alone isn't really good enough. You can pick up a cheap and
cheerful firewall appliance these days - stick it between your DSL router &
your switch/hub.

Ok thanks, at moment we have a dmz zone set to an unused (out of dhcp scope)
ip address, grc.com says we are stealthed, problem is it responds to ping
this is bad, so a hardware firewall will be a good idea, and then we can
switch of the built in firewall on the xp machines

Thanks for the advice and guidance
Rich