Server 2008 - ADDS with DNS - Workstations cant see websites?

hi. I've made a bit of a **** up somwhere! I have just setup a Windows 2008 Server for a friends small company (5 workstations) - first time I've used windows server. Active Directory with the GPO of Folder Redirection for users documents folders is running fine.

DNS installed with the roles setup but left unconfigured. The domain name is <companyname>.local. The workstations have the primary DNS set as the server IP and the Alternate as blank. The server is pointing to the ADSL modem router with static IP and the DNS as the router IP.

The workstations cannot see websites they, I presume have never visited before. (sites such as bbc.co.uk, gmail, etc are working fine) but new sites cannot resolve. First person to tell me what an idiot I am and how to fix can have my first born. Actually, make that my friends first born. Thanks!

ps in my defence those *'s were a fairly innoculous word describing a male hen that now looks worse for the censorship!

 

Oddly - they've rebooted the server and it all seems to be hunky dory and working again. For how long is anyones guess but still...

It was working initially - I had assumed that a dns cache was in use for their old websites that was slowly clearing and that it was really dns config issue but that appears to be another one of my daft ideas.

I really should learn about this stuff.