It appears that the DNS devolution bug that existed in the Windows Vista SP2 beta/RC exists in Windows 7 RTM. It was fixed in the final SP2 release.The problem is that the DNS client does not perform a full devolution of the DNS heirarchywhen resolving a host. For example, inour domain, we have a three-tier DNS namespace. Only the first two namespaces, that happen to be Windows AD DNS zones, are appended to the suffix search list. Our top-level domain name, which ishosted onBIND,is not appended to the suffix search list. This can be viewed using ipconfig /all.This issue was confirmed by the SP2 team, but they reported that it was fixed in the final SP2 at the time I submitted the bug report.The offered a couple workarounds in the meantime:1) Create a registry DWORD value of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\system\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters\DomainNameDevolutionLevel=0x2 Reboot computer2) Create a manual suffix search list in the DNS propertes of the network adapter.I confirmed that both workarounds work in Windows 7.

I now have a question on this since Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 are retail. Will this issue be corrected in an update? The workaround does work, but the issue was fixed in the final Vista/2008 SP2 release, so shouldn't it be fixed in 7 and R2? This issue will affect Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 systems in our environment when we decide to deploy. Our top-level BIND DNS namespace is not beingappended to name queries. Here is an example of our environment and the affect onWindows 7 and Server 2008 R2 computers.corp.ad.domain.com (Windows resource domain namespace; 7/R2 systems resolve properly without any OS changes)ad.domain.com (Empty top-level Windows domain namespace; 7/R2 systems resolve properly without any OS change)domain.com (Top-level BIND DNS namespace;7/R2 systems do not append this to the suffix search and requires OS modification)If I can submit a bug, like I did for the Vista/2008 SP2 RC, that is fine. I just cannot find where to do so for Windows 7.

The DNS devolution process was changed from XP to Vista but I am not sure how it changed in SP2. Have you looked at the group policy settings for "DNS Clients" where you can specify settings for the devolution?

The final release of Vista SP2did not havethis issue. I was testingthe SP2 public Release Candidate when Idiscovered the issue.I submitted a bug reporttothe SP2team and theyinformed me that it was fixedin a later build. Theysuggested a temporary workaround as I mentioned in the post above. When the official SP2was released, the issue was in fact corrected. However, the problem exists in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2.I could push the registryworkaround out via Group Policy, but Iprefer thatthe issue be fixedwith an update.