No Internet access from Server, but can access on other PC's

Question

I've got a question about a Windows 2008 server that can't seem to access the Internet.

This particular server is in Dallas and I'm in Houston, so I can't "physically" get to the server, but, apparently, at our site up in Dallas, they were having some Internet access problems. The AT&T tech came out, changed "something" in the router, and now all the PC's in the workgroup can get to the Internet, but this server can't.

To try to debug this problem, I compared adapter settings between the PC's that can access the Internet and the server that can't. The one difference I found was under the Ethernet Controller > Networking > IPV4 settings. An IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway were filled in and the Preferred and Alternate DNS server settings were filled in as well. Just in case, I copied all of this information down.

I next switched both the IP Address and DNS server settings to "automatic", OK'd out of the dialogs, and then went to see if a browser could access the Internet. What I found, was that IT COULD! I thought the problem was solved.

The problem came when those "other" PC's (which could still access the Internet) on the workgroup suddenly acted like they couldn't see the Windows Server 2008 server. This is going to sound strange, but the PC's had Quickbooks Point-of-Sale running on them. When they went to open up the "file" on the Windows 2008 server that had all of their data, they suddenly couldn't find it. Needless to say, to keep the business running I restored the written down IP addresses and DNS server addresses. Once I did that, the other PC's could open the right Quickbooks Point-of-Sale file and continue their work.

I do, at this point, have an "access problem" trying to get into this Windows 2008 Server. We typically use Teamviewer 11 on it, but somehow I can't quite get the password right and I can't seem to walk my guy up there in Dallas through how to change the password. However, I know I'll figure this out.

When I do, I can get more specifics about this question - like the brand name and model of the computer and the Ethernet controller and see the settings for myself.

But, if anyone has run into this problem before, I'm open to suggestions. Thanks!

Answer 1

This is a site for professionals, but you've shown a reasonable amount of effort in your diagnostics. You most likely have a misconfigured gateway or invalid DNS servers entries.

To get everything to work it should be the following.

1. While your server is set to automatic look at your settings - using ipconfig /all from a command prompt - note the gateway IP address and DNS servers.
2. Enter the gateway address DNS servers and mask from your automatic configuration. Enter the IP address from your static configuration notes.

Everything should work after that.