Is there a way to disable the appending of the primary DNS suffix when resolving hostnames but still have the connection-specific DNS suffix appended? The problem is that someone registered a domain name that is identical to our internal AD domain name. (Yeah, I know, we should have taken more care in choosing our internal domain name, but the people that did this are long gone and we are stuck with the issue.) Whoever registered the domain name (let's use company.com as an example) set up a wildcard DNS record (i.e., catch-all) that redirects all hostnames to the same external IP address (e.g., 72.3.135.151). The problem happens when users go to clients' sites. Unless the FQDN is used, everything resolves to that one external IP address (e.g., webserver1 resolves to 72.3.135.151 because the DNS client appends the primary DNS suffix, then looks up webserver1.company.com). On the other hand, if a user's laptop is not part of the domain and the primary DNS suffix is not set, then it works properly (e.g., webserver1 get ourclient.com appended to it, which the internal DNS servers resolve to 10.6.23.16). I know there are workarounds, but each one I've come up with has drawbacks (e.g. changing the primary DNS suffix can break certain services unless the computer object in AD is updated with the new FQDN). Thanks in advance, Victor S.

Hi Victor, This forum is mainly focus on Windows Vista networking problems and questions, your problem is more server DNS setting related. I suggest you post the problem on our Windows server DNS Discussions Group. For your convenience: Discussions in DNS (Windows Server) http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.windows.server.dns&cat=en_US_9c8c55b9-6c82-4984-9900-7c49bc3442ff&lang=en&cr=US Thank you for your understanding. Hope it helps.

I considered this more of a DNS client issue than a DNS server issue (since I am trying to stop Vista fromappending the primary DNS suffix), but I reposted in the Server DNS group anyway. For anyone who wants to follow this post, here is the link: http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.windows.server.dns&cat=en_US_9c8c55b9-6c82-4984-9900-7c49bc3442ff&lang=en&cr=US Thanks, Victor