MS Small Business Server 2008 – cannot resolve some top level domain names

Finally I have discovered how to fix this weird issue on Microsoft Small Business Server 2008. From time to time during some day you can experience strange issue. Suddenly you cannot access some domain names you just accessed in the morning or few days ago. Mostly time I had issue to access top level domain such as .co.uk or .biz. What was working in the morning suddenly giving error that that page is not available. It is very strange as you still can access other pages no problem.

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I tried to troubleshoot with ISP – no help as on their end all worked or if I plugged directly to firewall/router – I could access all pages without trouble. It was giving some indication that this is a problem related to DNS on Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 but I was not sure how to fix it.

Here is the solution how to fix the DNS resolution on Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 and it is related to all Server 2008 editions:

  • Start Registry Editor on your Windows server
  • Locate the following Registry key:
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesDNSParameters
  • On the Edit menu, click NEW, click DWORD (32-bit) value, and then the following values:

    Value: MaxCacheTTL

    Data Type: DWORD

    Data Value: 0x2A300 (172800 seconds in decimal or 2 days)

  • Click OK
  • Quit Registry Editor
  • Restart the DNS Server Service on the server

This problem does not happen if DNS Server is configured to use forwarders for Internet name resolution instead of root hints.

There is now existing Microsoft Knowledge Base: KB968372

Since I have applied this issue I have not seen  new troubles to access the pages.

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