Unruly Behavior

Congrats! Now you want to tell me why my servers here are stupid little bastards and come and fix 'em? ;-)
 

Jake,

Microsoft Tech Net and the Error Logs are what I use to figure out all my little bitch servers.

I treat Tech Net as the Bible and the Error Logs as Prophets. Just listen to the messages of the Prophets and see what the Bible has to say about them.

If Tech Net does not work then I go to Google. And if I have to figure it out on my own, I post it here so that I can find it when I have the same problem in the future.

According to my MCSE trainer, most Windows 2000/2003 issues can be whittled down to the following misconfigurations:

1. DNS
2. Replication
3. DNS
4. DNS

Oh, and the NETDIAG command is your friend.

-The Dren
 

Yes, I know DNS is an annoying problem which, unfortunately, I haven't completely resolved. When I think I fixed it, something else crops back up. It's primarily because this network was setup long before I got here, and I've just been babying the thing along the entire time.

That, and our Citrix Metaframe setup seems to have fits all the time, and none of our printer drivers like to work in a termserver/Citrix environment, so I'm getting blue screens now and again because of those stupid things. Technet doesn't help me with Citrix, unfortunately. :-(

I'd LOVE to be able to just bulldoze the whole setup and start from scratch, but unfortunately that's not all that easy.
 

Jake,

Here is a tip from Herb Martin at Learn Quick dot Com where I go for training. He will point you to DNS as the main cause of W2K/W2K3 problems.

Guidelines for DNS to support AD:

1) Dynamic for any zone supporting AD

2) All internal DNS clients NIC->IP properties must specify SOLELY your internal, dynamic DNS server (set)

3) DCs and even DNS servers are DNS clients too (see #2)
They too must be set STRICTLY to use internal DNS.

4) If you have more than one Domain/zone, every DNS server must be able to resolve ALL domains/zones (either directly or indirectly)

[#4 can be a larger subject, involving Conditional Forwarding, "cross Secondary zones", and Stub zones so let me know if you need more info on multi-tree DNS]

I know it is not all DNS, and work every day with networks that I or my company had no hand in creating.

I have a common checklist, that goes something like this:

1) DNS - CHeck out
2) WINS - Remove unless absolutely required
3) Group Policy - Get the Group Policy Management Console from M$
4) Active Directory Structure
5) Windows Updates

Less troublesome, but still a problem can be:

1) Sites and services
2) Replication

That is my rundown anyway.

How about the fast response to your comments.

-The Dren