Guys,

For months, I was able to RDP my Server 2008 SP2 box from either my desktop or laptop in the house by it's name. Now, for about a month, the server will only resolve by it's IP. Has Microsoft pushed down any changes via WU lately that would have caused this behavior?

Both my desktop & laptop are both W7 x64 RTM, and they can RDP each other by name just fine. Even when my desktop was still XP Pro SP3, that way of doing RDP still worked.

I did a VM install of 2008 SP2 & after allowing the appropriate ports in the Windows Firewall, the VM exhibited the exact same behavior!

Can anyone here shed some light on this? Thanks in advance for taking the minute or two to read this...

just put it in your hosts file. done.

Yep, I know that will resolve the issue, but I'm a guy that chronically asks 'why' - I want to know why it stopped working 'all-of-a-sudden'...

Well understanding how it was resolving the name before is required to understand why its not resolving now. Were you just using netbios broadcast to resolve the host name? DNS? Wins?

I'm pretty sure that it's by netbios. I say 'pretty' because I have minimal experience with any of the three things you mention in the reply. All the computers in the house get their IP from my router, and the DNS (I assume) is pass-through from my ISP (the server is not trying to resolve itself first, before going out to the ISP's DNS servers).

What network is your server set to? Private, Public? Do you have network discovery on? Is netbios even enabled?

Can you ping the hostname of the server?

I would check to see if your dns ip address are the same, normally routers acts as a local dns server for your network and then forwards any unknow requests to your isp.

I cannot ping the host name of my server. I assume that you mean ping the name I 'gave' the machine during setup?

My server was just updated to 2008 R2 this morning. I have my network set to 'private' on the server. Network discovery is on, I've got to do a little web search to figure out how to check the netbios status...

Update - I just noticed that every time I try and enable network discovery, it keeps reverting to 'off'...

Update #2 - I noticed in my adapter settings on the server, NetBIOS over Tcpip is enabled, but my IPv4 DNS comes up as my router's default gateway IP...

Well if you can not ping the "name" of your server -- then yeah you have name resolution issue.. Network discovery needs to be on.. do you have your firewall on the server enabled or disabled?

As to your dns -- yeah, that normally points to the users router.. dnsmasq is a common features of soho routers, ie they forward on the dns queries to your ISPs or whatever other dns you have setup in the router.

So unless your running a AD, where all members and servers should point to your AD dns this is normal.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows...twork-discovery
Off

This state prevents your computer from seeing other network computers and devices and prevents people on other network computers from seeing your computer.

Its like they write these articles for 3 graders "from seeing other network computers and devices" What about just giving info on the ports and protocols being used!!! And what your turning off or blocking when set to off

But yeah if OFF, it unlikely your going to be able to broadcast for the name.

OK, this is really nuts - I open a command prompt to ping the server's name (NTWEB), and it attempts to resolve a host that reads back as 'NTWEB.W2SJW' (which is my domain name that I own), via an IP in Bogota, Colombia!

What the hell is up with that?

Sounds like you have dns suffix search list to me.

C:\>ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : quadcore-w7
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : local.lan
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : local.lan

So if I ping one of my local servers name, it does dns first.

C:\>ping p4-28g

Pinging p4-28g.local.lan [192.168.1.4] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

See how it added the dns suffix. Sounds like you needs some basic understanding of how name resolution works on a windows machine

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727005.aspx
TCP/IP Fundamentals for Microsoft Windows
Chapter 7 - Host Name Resolution

But .W2SJW is not a valid TLD, so you left off some info??? Do you mean it searched for .W2SJW.com -- which seems to be a valid website.

Why don't you post the output of ipconfig /all so we can see if your searching any suffix, or have your machine as a member of a domain, which will be an automatic suffix search, etc.

OK, as requested:

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : NTWEB
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : W2SJW

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : W2SJW
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : NVIDIA nForce 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-13-D3-15-31-79
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::4505:5a32:80ca:46ed%11(Preferred)
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.3(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Saturday, October 17, 2009 15:09:55
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Tuesday, October 20, 2009 3:09:55
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 234886099
DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-12-6B-BD-CB-00-13-D3-15-31-79

DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

Tunnel adapter isatap.W2SJW:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : W2SJW
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft ISATAP Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 9:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2001:0:4137:9e50:451:207d:3f57:fffc(Prefe
rred)
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::451:207d:3f57:fffc%13(Preferred)
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : ::
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Disabled

Well there you go

DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : W2SJW
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : W2SJW

Why would you have that -- thats not a valid domain or even a tld, etc.

is this machine a member of a domain called that? Why would you have that setting there?

Deleted those settings, and then you should end up doing a netbios broadcast for the name, or setup local dns correctly for your local machine names, and domain, etc.

Ooh yeah - having my router ID itself as the same name as my main PC is not good - I gotta change that right now!