Tag Archives: dns

Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 DNS Stops Resolving Names “Can’t find google.co.uk: Server failed”

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I use Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 DNS to resolve my public names and precisely every two days I get “Can’t find google.co.uk: Server failed” messages and the usual “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage” nonsense. This only happens when using root hints and not forwarders and only for few selected top level domains (.co.uk being one of them) Here is what the situation looks like when the DNS server is broken:

Windows_Server_2008_R2_SP1_DNS_Stops_Resolving_Names_Can't_find_google.co.uk_Server_failed_1

Ping returns “Ping request could not find host google.co.uk. Please check the name and try again” and nslookup throws error in title. Pretty annoying and so far the fix was to simply bounce the dns service – not elegant in any shape or form but highly successful!
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Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2 “Changing the Primary Domain DNS name of this computer to “” failed….”

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Windows Server 2008 R2 VMs started giving me errors while joining the domain recently, here is the exact error message that comes up:

Windows_7_Server_2008_R2_Changing_the_Primary_Domain_DNS_name_of_this_computer_to_failed_1

netsetup.log (%SystemRoot%\debug\netsetup.log) shows no errors and my VMs appears to be joined properly:

Windows_7_Server_2008_R2_Changing_the_Primary_Domain_DNS_name_of_this_computer_to_failed_2

Now to fix this there are two potential solutions/recommendations:
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