Hi All,

Please can anybody help,

I recently brought a 2003 server to replace an old NT box that we had running as our BDC. I thought I had loads of time to get my head around any issues of the migration but the old NT box died on friday which means I have to get a bit lively with the migration :)

I have the 2003 server up and running and have restored the data on to it, I have a number of user accounts set up and can log onto the the server with no problems.

However the new server has a different name to the the old one and so shortcuts and excel spreadsheets are not working properly.

My idea was to set up some DNS but that doesnt seem to work. I can get www.servername to work but not servername on its own and as the original domain was NT it wasnt FQD.

My second thought was a little bit old school but I thought it may get me out of the mud for a spell while I researched a proper solution and I set a servername entry into the hosts file of the client machine.

Pinging servername returns the correct ip and reponds as expected.

However trying to connect to the shares using "\\servername\" doesnt work but using "\\ipaddress\" does.

am I right in assuming that the 2003 server is refusing the connection because it doesnt understand the name even though the hosts file is translating to an ip? if so how can I fix?

Any advice or help would be extreamly awesome.

Thanks

The company where I work has just had a major server failure,

Update,

I managed to get it to connect using the hosts file method by changing the registry on the 2003 server

Basically I added DisableStrictNameChecking

to the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters"

and now the hosts name forwarding works, Im still stumped how to get a forwarding to work through the DNS server though.

Any Ideas?

"I recently brought a 2003 server to replace an old NT box that we had running as our BDC."

So what was running as the NT PDC?

Proper upgrade method was to upgrade NT PDC to 2003 AD to preserve the user accounts. Then you bring in the new 2003 server as a DC. Etc. Ect...

Nuke the hosts file. Completely wrong approach. You need dns working. There has to be A and ptr records for your servers in DNS along with your name space.

Wksts point to MS dns for Dns. MS dns has the isp dns servers listed in the forwarders tab [not to be confused with forward lookup zone]so that requests for resolution can be forwarded to the internet for resolution.

Imagine the power if you knew how to internet search

Hi,

Thanks for your help and my apologies, I was typing in a hurry and hit BDC instead of PDC. :)

in fact it was the only DC.

I totally agree with your comments about the hosts file being the wrong approach however as a quick fix it worked.

I am still attempting to get the DNS working but it totally baffles me.

I have tried setting up A ptr, and Cnames, in both its own zone and within the main zone.

I can get things like oldservername.newdomain.com to work but I cant get it to simply resolve servername=192.168.x.x

My workstation DNS is set the my MS DNS server, and the internet forwarding works as it resolves internet domain names with no prolems.

Is there any good online resources you can recommend or step by step tutorials?

Microsofts technet has a bunch on dns.

Perhaps google can provide some how tos

"I can get www.servername to work but not servername"

Sounds like you named your namespace the same as your server. That is one of the don'ts in dns.

My suggestion is you uninstall DNS and reinstall once you understand the install routine and how to correctly answer the questions.

Imagine the power if you knew how to internet search