Now it works, now it don't. A DNS issue?

Have a domain with 2003 r2 as the dc and approximately 50 clients (all xps). Just added a standalone 2003 as a member of domain. When I first login to the standalone (as domain admin with all kinds of permissions) I not only see the network and all drives, the ads running on the dc is viewable.

when I first login to standalone, netdiag.exe test is great. But after 10-15 minutes, the 'DC list test' fails as well as the 'trust relationship test'.

Again, when I first login, I can access the ads from the standalone using the mmc add-in. But after the 10-15 min, that connection is lost. (I can manually reconnect)

Keep in mind the network, including the dc, still remains browseable as well as the internet.

Any ideas?Is this a DNS issue?

 

Is your AD/DNS server set as the primary DNS on the standalone server? Most name and browser problems on AD networks stem from this not being the case.

 

Thanks for your reply!

Yes I have the standalone DNS primary address pointing to the dc where AD and DNS is running.

 

The next thing I suggest you look at is NetBIOS and the master browser system. I wonder if the new server coming on line is causing a master browser election. When you first start up the 2003 PC, another system is the master browser and therefore you can browse the NetBIOS namespace easily. However, the serve coming on line forces a browser re-election the result of which is that the 2003 becomes master browser. However, it doesn't have a full listing of all the network so after the election you lose simple name resolution. Have a look at this for information on troubleshooting master browsing:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/188305

However, I may be wrong. So have a good search through your event viewer logs. It might even be worth doing some packet sniffing to see if the 2003 system is sending out name resolution or log on requests and not getting responses.