Misconfigured DNS stops computers from joining domain

[Mike]

I administer a domain at my company. The DC was an NT 4.0
Server that was upgraded to Windows 2000 Server. That
upgrade happened over a year ago. We never had an issue
until just recently when I tried to add a Windows 2000
Professional machine to our domain. I constantly get the
error "The domain cannot be reached" (can't remember the
exact text) The same error occurs whenever I try to add a
Windows 2000 machine. While google'ing for some info, I
ran into a number of posts that said a misconfigured DNS
could be the culprit. DNS is running on the same 2000
Server (DC). I installed netdiag on the machine and here
is the result that I found a little troubling:

DNS test . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Failed
[FATAL]: All DNS servers authoritative
for 'myserver.mycompany.com' are currently down.
[WARNING] The DNS entries for this DC are not registered
correctly on DNS server '172.17.xxx.xxx'. Please wait for
30 minutes for DNS server replication.
[FATAL] No DNS servers have the DNS records for this DC
registered.

Clearly the DNS for the domain is not working. Can
anybody point my in the right direction for repairing
this? I have never needed to configure a DNS server
before.

Thanks for any help,
Mike

 

[Danny Sanders]

See:
How to: Configure DNS for Internet Access In Windows 2000

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;300202

Setting Up the Domain Name System for Active Directory

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;237675



hth

DDS W 2k MVP MCSE