win xp unable to resolve ip to host name

I was hoping somebody else would've gone through this as well. Thanks to everybody for looking. I'l keep checking back to see if anyone else has any ideas.

Have you tried a NSLOOKUP to see what kind of results you are getting there?

yea referring to the post above, I would try manually setting the DNS servers and nslooking up computers in the LAN different subnetworks and the internet and try pulling up a zone transfer on the root dns server to see if the problematic computers are in the list. If it does work it would have to be a problem with the DHCP configuration, if nslookup does not work I would readjust the settings on you're DNS server.. btw are you using Dynamic DNS?

I'm still getting the feel of all this "so scuse me if I go astray" (as prince once sang) but I was wondering if your problem might relate to NetBIOS?

Is the machine name that gets returned with a ping -a the NetBIOS name rather than a DNS name?

If so then perhaps you should check that NetBIOS is enabled on your WXP clients.

... yea.. check that first /blush

Steveb12:

Not able to solve a problem is frustrating me. As you have mentioned in your previous post, NT4.0 is the Primary Domain Controller. Would you mind answering a few questions, I have?

1]. Is the host you are trying to Ping in a Domain?
2]. Is the PDC, DHCP, DNS, WINS, and Client machines on the same subnetwork?
3]. For the DHCP Enabled XP Clients, is the radio button for 'Obtain DNS Server Address Automatically' checked?
4].Is anything specified in the 'Append Primary and Connections Specific DNS Suffixes'?
5].Does the DNS Servers have WINS-R Resource Record specified in the in-addr.arpa domain? Is it Enabled?

As per what I've read for Reverse Lookups using WINS, WINS servers are NOT indexed using IP addresses. What usally happens is if the DNS has the WINS-R RR in the Reverse LookUp Zone File, and if the DNS Recursion is not able to resolve, it issues Node Adapter Status Request to the WINS using the IP address and gets the NetBIOS name and appends the domain name and returns the response to the client machine.

Any information you can provide, I think would be useful for people trying to resolve this issue. I hope we can solve this.