Windows 8 Ping tries to use WINS even though no WINS server configured

Ongoing problems with ping and DNS not working as expected. Have now used network monitor to get a better understanding of what is going on.

Environment is:

Windows 8 and Server 2012
all DNS no WINS server in use
Active directory server is also the DNS server
DHCP on same server is configured to provide clients with three DNS servers - 1: Internal AD server, 2: external DNS, 3: external DNS. The 2 & 3 DNS servers are provided to allow the clients to still operate externally if the DNS server if down.

Now moving on to what Network Monitor has revealed: Is seems Windows 8 Ping tries to use WINS even though is no WINS server configured, only address resolution should be DNS but is seems it isn't. This ping then fails. On top of that the failure to resolve appears to then get cached by DNS cache, even though DNS didn't actually even try to resolve the name.

So to summarise question is why does Windows 8 try to resolve a ping with WINS rather than using DNS as expected?

NickC

Posted 2013-03-26T19:52:04.057

Reputation: 301

do you see the same behavior if you fully specify the FQDN of the target machine? – Frank Thomas – 2013-03-26T19:59:19.887

Yep, ping server.domain.local also fails, as does ping domain.local. It seems that win8 just insists on using NetBIOS (not WINS as I had mistakenly said) rather than DNS. – NickC – 2013-03-26T21:36:05.687

Answers

If the name requests are sent to the broadcast address, then they aren't WINS – they are NBNS, the NetBIOS name service, which otherwise uses an identical packet format. Windows always tries NBNS for names it could not resolve using DNS.

user1686

Posted 2013-03-26T19:52:04.057

Reputation: 283 655

Ah but the problem is it doesn't even try DNS just goes directly to NbtNs. This obviously fails because it is supposed to be using DNS. – NickC – 2013-03-26T21:33:47.627

does this behavior continue after running 'ipconfig /flushdns' ? – Frank Thomas – 2013-03-27T11:38:44.650

No ipconfig /flushDNS cures it temporarily. I also get the feeling, but not certain, that if Ping Server is the first command issued then problem occurs whereas if Ping Server.Domain.local is first command issued it often the all works ok. – NickC – 2013-03-27T16:40:58.233

Stop DNSCache service seems to cure the problem temporarily. Question is why is the DNSCache getting corrupted in the first place?

NickC

Posted 2013-03-26T19:52:04.057

Reputation: 301