I just started consulting for this firm. They used to host their website in house until very recently. Now, some of, but not all, the computers at the firm can't access the company's external website. It's odd that some computers don't have a problem. I set up two fresh computers - completely clean builds, and they both have trouble, too, so I don't think it's anything to do with the individual computers. I'm more suspicious of the server. That's why I'm asking this question, here. I checked group policy on the server and it doesn't look like the IT guy before me did anything, there, but maybe I missed something. I'm more inclined to think it has something to do with them hosting the website in-house and moving it out of house. Can someone give me some ideas on what might be causing this?

First of all check if you are able to access the server using its IP address. If you are unable to do, then it should be a connectivity problem. Is your external Website DNS name the same as the internal one? If yes, then create a primary DNS zone for the website on your internal DNS server named as an example www.website.com and then create an empty A record and add the correst IP address of the server. Once done, make sure that your client cmputers are pointing to the internal DNS server as primary one and then use nslookup to check that all is okay with DNS records. Use internal DNS name of the web server to access it. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights. Microsoft Student Partner Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator: Security Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer: Security Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuration Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure, Configuration

Hello, do they use the same domain name as the website use it? Then create an A record named 'www' pointing to the ip address of the webserver.Best regards Meinolf Weber Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights.

yes create an A record point to the webserver ip addrees ..they use the same.

How many DNS servers do you have? Did you check this WWW record on all DNS servers? Do you see any AD/DNS replication errors? Are these clients pointing to same DNS server? When you ping the web site from a problem computer, does it resolve to the correct IP address? Did you run IPCONFIG/FLUSHDNS command from the problem computer? Santhosh Sivarajan | MCTS, MCSE (W2K3/W2K/NT4), MCSA (W2K3/W2K/MSG), CCNA, Network+ Houston, TX Blogs - http://blogs.sivarajan.com/ Articles - http://www.sivarajan.com/publications.html Twitter: @santhosh_sivara - http://twitter.com/santhosh_sivara This posting is provided AS IS with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Sorry, I didn't get back to this, early. I kinda "fixed" the problem. Maybe someone knows why this worked. It turns out the computers that were having trouble were using static IP addresses. I set them up for DHCP - the ones that could access the website were using DHCP - and it worked fine. I guess I have a new question: Why would static cause a problem? Thank you for your help. I didn't run ipconfig/flushdns from the prob computers; I'll try that if I run across anymore with static addresses.

It sounds like they were not using the correct DNS server IP address. Santhosh Sivarajan | MCTS, MCSE (W2K3/W2K/NT4), MCSA (W2K3/W2K/MSG), CCNA, Network+ Houston, TX Blogs - http://blogs.sivarajan.com/ Articles - http://www.sivarajan.com/publications.html Twitter: @santhosh_sivara - http://twitter.com/santhosh_sivara This posting is provided AS IS with no warranties, and confers no rights.