a) DC Locator service - what is that? Usually whatever DC replies first will refer you to what is your nearest (i.e. lowest cost) DC. You can probably load AD Sites and Subnets to find your lowest cost DC. Verify that you are using that (netstat.exe etc)
b) DNS registration errors are using logged in the Windows Event Log. Additionally: ping yourhost.domain.tld should resolve to your machine (or you can use nslookup to verify this on alternate name servers if required) c) You could resolve a few external domains Cheers Ken From: Graeme Carstairs [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, 12 January 2009 8:27 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Verify correct working DNS/AD Hi, I am doing some work for a subsidiary of a large corporation, who recently migrated their domain into the large corporations global domain. There are various issues going on around DNS and AD authentication, GPO processing and the ability of machines to find DC's. The site I am working on does not have a local DNS server or a local DC and this has been going on for months with the corporate IT bods passing me around from pillar to post. Unfortunately I do not have access to the DC's or DNS servers so cannot start investigating from there. Is there a tool that I can run with a machine setup for each of the 3 combinations of DNS servers I have been given to use, and get it to fully test functionality for a client PC i.e. 1. can it find all servers DC's etc. it needs to login and process policies etc. correctly (is the DC locator service working). 2. is the machine registering itself with the DNS servers its given to allow others to find it. 3. External resolution is working correctly. It would be useful to be able to run a tool get a report for each configuration they give me and then pass it back to them and say no dice this one doesn't work because of x,y and z. It would be especially useful if I could run it over a period of say 24 hours, and get it to report every few minutes to allow for network fluctuations and server load etc. TIA Graeme -- Carbon credits are a bit like beating someone up on this side of the world and sponsoring one of those poor starving kids on the other side of the world to make up for the fact that you're a complete shit at home. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
