Weird DNS problems in XP Pro

  • Thread starter Thread starter Timothy Barbeisch
  • Start date Start date
T

Timothy Barbeisch

Hello:

I'm trying to solve a really weird set of problems with the DNS client
service in Windows XP Pro. I have a Gateway DS 450E laptop with
onboard wired and wireless Ethernet cards. I have reinstalled XP Pro
from scratch to no avail attempting to solve this problem.

Currently there is _no_ extra software installed on this unit other
then the operating system -- which is Windows XP Professional w/SP2.

The problem that I'm having is really weird. The DNS client stops
working even though the system can contact the DNS server on my local
network (ping's work just fine). I can't resolve any hostnames with
_any_ software. Going to "www.cnn.com" fails -- as does "ping
www.cnn.com" (unable to resolve host).

If I stop and restart the DNS client service low and behold all of the
hostnames start to resolve just fine. For awhile anyway -- eventually
it stops working again. It's not a network issue when ping's still
work -- it's not even sending packets to my DNS server to attempt to
resolve the hostnames -- it just quits working.

I had assumed this was being caused by Cyberpatrol -- which is why I
wound up reinstalling XP fresh. It's happening on a brand new install.
What the heck could be going on? This has me at wits end -- I've
never seen anything remotely like this before.
 
Timothy Barbeisch said:
Hello:

I'm trying to solve a really weird set of problems with the DNS client
service in Windows XP Pro. I have a Gateway DS 450E laptop with
onboard wired and wireless Ethernet cards. I have reinstalled XP Pro
from scratch to no avail attempting to solve this problem.

Currently there is _no_ extra software installed on this unit other
then the operating system -- which is Windows XP Professional w/SP2.

The problem that I'm having is really weird. The DNS client stops
working even though the system can contact the DNS server on my local
network (ping's work just fine). I can't resolve any hostnames with
_any_ software. Going to "www.cnn.com" fails -- as does "ping
www.cnn.com" (unable to resolve host).

If I stop and restart the DNS client service low and behold all of the
hostnames start to resolve just fine. For awhile anyway -- eventually
it stops working again. It's not a network issue when ping's still
work -- it's not even sending packets to my DNS server to attempt to
resolve the hostnames -- it just quits working.

I had assumed this was being caused by Cyberpatrol -- which is why I
wound up reinstalling XP fresh. It's happening on a brand new install.
What the heck could be going on? This has me at wits end -- I've
never seen anything remotely like this before.
Click to expand...

Where is the DNS server you are querying?

If it's at your ISP, then it may be overloaded and verrrryyy slooooow.
Ths can cause windows to stop querying it, leaving no active DNS servers.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prjj_ipa_vitx.asp


If it's on the local LAN, then it should be responding near instantly.

If the problem is an overloaded DNS server being slow to respond, there are
a few things you can try:

1) Try using another DNS server.

2) Try disabling the DNS client service, this prevents the DNS server being
blacklisted.

3) Try tunning a local DNS server, eg treewalk:
http://ntcanuck.com/
 
Yeah but that's too low level. The DNS server is local -- we are in an
active directory environment. None of the other clients have any
problems contacting it.

I've figured out since that the laptop only has problems talking to the
DNS server on it's onboard WLAN (wireless) card. When directly
connected to the LAN via wired ethernet I have no problems. I'm
looking at replacing the onboard wireless card -- none of my other
laptops have problems using the wireless network here and seeing as how
the problem survived a OS reinstall I'm going to assume it's hardware
based.

Wish me luck.
 
Back
Top