Resolving DNS problems

[Wil Osmford]

I have two different machines that I am working on that have this problem. One is an XP machine and the other is a 98 machine. We run a registration system at the college I go to that enables people access to our network. The system has 2 seperate vlans to organize who has been registered and who has not. I am in charge of the LRE section of the network. Both the machines are connected properly to our LRE devices and I can obtain a valid IP address that would place then in the correct VLAN. I have checked to make sure that all the setting for TCP/IP are correct and the browers, IE in this case have automatic LAN settings. We obtain DNS and DHCP automatically and use nothing that is static. The problem is that the internet browers will not pull up our registration page. I constantly get, "Page cannot be displayed." I can ping a loopback and and I can ping every single IP except the gateway. When I try to ping a bogus site, like www.a.com, I get an error that says I cannot find the host. Sometimes we run into firewall issues, but these computers do not have firewalls on them. Can anyone point me in a direction on this one? Thank You.

[Ron Kinner]

open a command or cmd window and try
nslookup regpagename

where regpagename is the name of the registration page that you are trying to get to. What happens? Do you get the correct IP address?

You might check the etc/hosts and etc/lmhosts files to make sure they do not have erroneous info. On a 2k they are located at C:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc

Is the registration page secure by any chance? https instead of http?

Should you be able to ping the gateway? Many do not respond to pings anymore for security reasons.

Did you verify on the switch that the switch thinks they are in the correct VLAN?

Ron