DNS Slow to Start?

The customer stated that when his server (Windows Server 2003 SP1) boots up the DNS Server service does not become availabe/responsive for ~5 minutes. Customer also stated he has other DC's in this domain that are the same model server (same specs too) that do not have the problem. So I ask, "What do you mean not responsive?". During this 5 minute period, the administrator cannot use the DNS MMC to administer the server, and DNS lookups to this server fail with a timeout error. The customer can: Ping the server, connect to file shares, etc.

Troubleshooting

So my initial question was "What is DNS doing for 5 minutes?". In order to determine where dns.exe was hung up or spinning his wheels, I replaced dns.exe with the checked build.

Walkthrough:

1.     Downloaded the checked build of SP1

2.     Extracted and expanded the checked build of dns.exe (What is a checked build?)

3.     Worked through the process of replacing the free build of DNS.exe (Booting into safe mode in order to bypass WFP (Windows file protection))

4.     Created the dnsdebug file (a text file with no extension under %windir%\system32\dns). The checked build of DNS looks for this file, and reads the contents to determine the level of output.

5.     In the file I set the debug flags for DNS_DEBUG_INIT (0x00000010 ) & DNS_DEBUG_INIT2 (0x01000000) and set the output to go to the debugger (0x00000002), net result (0x01000012). The image below shows contents of the file.

Read more: NTDebugging blog

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