Windows 2008 DNS Fails To Resolve Some Domain Names

When using the DNS service in Microsoft Windows Server 2008 or Microsoft Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2008, you may be unable to resolve certain domain names.

This may occur if you have specified your ISP's DNS servers as Forwarders in the DNS Manager, and if those DNS servers cannot resolve the name by themselves.

What should happen is that the DNS service should then submit the query to the root servers to resolve the name.

However, in Windows 2008 RTM (SP1) and SP2, the GUI for the DNS Manager contains the wrong toggle for whether to use the root servers if the forwarders fail. The option “Use root hints if no forwarders are available” must be disabled (unticked) in order to enable this behaviour.