DNS name resolution does not work on Windows Server 2003

Source: Microsoft Support

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On the Windows Server 2003 computer, you are unable to perform DNS name resolution. You may experience the following issues:

Ping www.microsoft.com , you get a �host not found� error.

If you create a hosts file and put the record into the hosts file, the same issue occurs.

If you use the NSLOOKUP tool to query the record, it may work.

If you collect a Network Monitor trace, you find that there is no DNS packet coming out from the computer.

If you Ping localhost, it fails too.

When the problem happens, the DNS Client Service is up and running.

Clearing the DNS resolver cache, IP Reset, Winsock Reset may not help.

This problem may occur if the following registry values were deleted.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters]

"Domain"=""
"NV Domain"=""

This may happen If the Windows Server 2003 computer is imaged using the some imaging software.

Create these two REG_SZ values. If the computers are members of a Windows 2003 domain, by default these two values should be the Domain DNS name.

1. Launch Registry Editor and locate the following key.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters]

2. In the right pane, find these two REG_SZ values:

"Domain"
"NV Domain"

If the values do not exist, manually create them.

3. Modify the data of these two values so that they are the DNS name of the domain. For example, if the domain is named mydomain.com, then the data of these two values should be mydomain.com too.

4. Exit Registry Editor and reboot the computer.

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