I received reports that our Vista and Win7 clients are not appending their connection specific DNS suffixes when performing DNS queries. I am running Vista on my desktop, but I explicitly define my suffix search order, which works as expected. I changed my configuration to use the 'append primary and connection specific DNS suffixes' setting and selected 'append parent suffixes of the primary DNS suffix'. Now, the primary DNS suffix gets appended, but not my connection specific suffix. This is causing issues because our domain suffix is <domain>.corp (primary suffix), but our main name space is <domain>.com (connection specific). Our clients need to be able to query <domain>.com names because that's where the majority of our web applications reside. The behavior is the same whether I perform the query on a single label or multi-label name. I'm running Vista SP1 and am getting my IP settings via DHCP. IP details: c:\>ipconfig /all Windows IP Configuration Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : D03515 Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : domain.CORP Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : domain.CORP domain.com Ethernet adapter Primary NIC: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : domain.com Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) 82566DM-2 Gigabit Network Connection Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-1E-4F-B7-6F-12 DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::d80e:88b9:8f32:49c8%10(Preferred) IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 10.1.177.208(Preferred) Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Monday, September 28, 2009 4:19:45 PM Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Thursday, October 01, 2009 6:15:22 PM Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.1.177.1 DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.1.188.137 DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.6.24.5 10.6.24.4 Primary WINS Server . . . . . . . : 10.6.15.10 NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled DNS query on system. system.domain.com is a valid record in the domain.com namespace. c:\>nslookup Default Server: dnsdc02.domain.corp Address: 10.6.24.5 > system Server: dnsdc02.domain.corp Address: 10.6.24.5 *** dnsdc02.domain.corp can't find system: Non-existent domain Performing the query using FQDN works fine. > system.domain.com Server: dnsdc02.domain.corp Address: 10.6.24.5 Non-authoritative answer: Name: system.domain.com Address: 10.1.26.30 Has anyone else seen this behavior? I've tried doing searches, and have found these posts which sound similar, but they don't address my exact issue.. http://blogs.technet.com/networking/archive/2009/04/16/dns-client-name-resolution-behavior-in-windows-vista-vs-windows-xp.aspx http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpronetworking/thread/7868fc68-27fa-4b77-8d63-d58d9e2e685b/

I am just starting out with Windows 7 and have discovered the same thing here. I have the DHCP server giving out domain.corp.com as the DNS domain name and I have the box checked on this Windows 7 system to append parent suffixes of the primary DNS suffix. If I try to ping hostnames that I know exist in both corp.com and domain.corp.com namespaces, it will successfully ping hostname.domain.corp.com, which makes sense. If I try "ping HOSTNAME" (or go to in a browser, of course) that I know only exists in corp.com namespace, I just get "Ping request could not find host HOSTNAME. Please check the name and try again."Your post was the first thing I found when I googled for the problem, so unfortunately we're just in the same boat at the moment. I'll post back if I find an answer!

Small update, again, possibly just for Windows 7 (don't know about Vista). I was just reading on http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754143.aspx, which is the same as going to the help file on the Windows 7 system, and this caught my eye: "IPv4 and IPv6 Advanced DNS Tab Applies To: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 You can use the settings on this tab for this network connection only if you are not using Obtain DNS server address automatically on the General tab."Has this always been true? I looked back at the help file for DNS for TCP/IP on Windows XP and it doesn't really say specifically. I was always under the impression that the DNS tab of the properties of your IP connection was to further refine behavior, even though you may get the actual DNS server IP addresses given to you from the DHCP server. Apparently this is not the case in Windows 7. Maybe a group policy will have to be the solution. But I'm not happy if that's the case because we have more than just Windows clients connecting and I don't yet know how it'll affect them.

We are going through these exact same issues with Windows Web Server Rc2. Has anyone found a solution to this.