Servers Can't Resolve Own Hostnames or Network

[glennda]

If you set the servers to DHCP temporarily can you ping hostnames?

Also try doing nslookup servername dnsserverIP

is the DNS client service started?

[mac_shinobi]

@Ric_ @glennda or anyone else who posted - are there any other things that you would try or do if this sort of thing happened. What other things can you do to check your forward ( maybe reverse lookup zones ) etc to make sure DNS has not been poisoned or messed up, ensure dns scavenging is enabled and set to a reasonable time frame

Just asking as think it would be a good idea to put a wiki together of the above things and anything else and in the correct order to do things.

[tmcd35]

Just quickly read this thread from the beginning and three questions immediately came to mind:

1) What happened to the FSMO roles when the "primary" server went down? Did you force all 5 over to the "secondary" server?

2) Are the effected servers still members of the domain? They are not having any communication issues with their AD Accounts? Might be they need removing re-adding to domain? (Don't know enough about Exchange to know how easy/risky a move that is).

3) Have you been through the DNS records on your DNS servers with a fine tooth comb and removed any mention of the old, now defunct, domain controller? It may be there is a stray record that is causing the effected server to try and communicate with an old domain controller that is no longer on the network.

[glennda]

2) Are the effected servers still members of the domain? They are not having any communication issues with their AD Accounts? Might be they need removing re-adding to domain? (Don't know enough about Exchange to know how easy/risky a move that is).

3) Have you been through the DNS records on your DNS servers with a fine tooth comb and removed any mention of the old, now defunct, domain controller? It may be there is a stray record that is causing the effected server to try and communicate with an old domain controller that is no longer on the network.

2. Don't do that to your exchange server otherwise you are giving yourself more headaches! Another thing to check though is that you have a Global catalog server. Exchange won't start without one (under AD sites and services expande the site and server then NTDS settings.) Although this wouldn't affect DNS.

3. Check in the DNS is the old DC is still listed as a name server. Also in AD if it is mentioned there as a DC (would have to be removed via ADSI edit).

[sukh]

I'd try remove any DC/GC cleanly via ntdsutil. - Pretty muc documented here - How to remove data in Active Directory after an unsuccessful domain controller demotion