I've just set up a small domain using windows 2000 server. All of my clients are 2000 and up, so I am only using DNS (no WINS). All of the local clients are connecting fine, but I have a remote site (using a pair of Cisco 1700 routers over a DS1 line) that refuse to join the domain. I can ping both ways, and even use WinVNC to control the remote computers! I can also get set the lmhosts file on the remote clients to point to the servers, and browse the servers! This is the error message I get: "The following error occured validating the name "truffle" (our domain) This condition may be caused by a DNS lookup problem, please see the following microsoft web site: go.microsoft.blah blah blah The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted." help

is the remote site a domain as well?

I am a little confused. You say you edit the lmhosts but you want to fix DNS not netbios names. Right? You need to edit the HOSTS file not LMHOSTS. also you give "truffle" as your domain. What about the top level domain as in truffle.com? If you're default domain is set to truffle.com then entering truffle will look for truffle.truffle.com. What DNS servers are the clients pointing to? Maybe the DNS servers they are going to will not resolve that local server if its an Internet DNS server or remote DNS server with no knowlege of your local network names. Maybe try adding to the hosts file on the clients as in: 192.168.0.23 Server.truffle.com truffle

The remote site is not a domain (nor was it when we had an NT domain). Paracomp, I edited the host and lmhost files, since I wasn't sure which one was which. The domain is just 'truffle'. Will it cause a problem not having a '.com' at the end? I've tried editing the host file like you showed, but it doesn't seem to work. I added the line: 10.0.0.3 moe truffle Here is some more detail of my setup: Main DNS server: server name: MOE ip: 10.0.0.3 subnet: 255.255.0.0 gateway: 10.0.0.75 (cisco 1700 router) DNS: 127.0.0.1 (note: this is also our proxy server. I've pointed all DNS request to 10.0.0.3) Local clients: ip: 10.0.0.x subnet: 255.255.0.0 gateway: blank DNS: 10.0.0.3 Remote clients: ip: 10.0.1.x subnet: 255.255.0.0 gateway: 10.0.1.1 (cisco 1700 router) DNS: 10.0.0.3 help