Bloody DHCP

Ok so in my recent posted I talked about how damn Optus has this DNS that redirects unknown addresses to looksmart or some such and that you can get around it by using an alternative Optus DNS.

Well it took quite a few attempts to change the DNS setting! I thought that as my DC had a second (hidden) LAN interface after the VM having been moved from VMWare Server to ESX it might be handing out the DNS configured in the hidden interface. My primary connection was coming up as 'Local Area Connection 2' and whenever I tried to change anything it would warn me that there was another interface with a duplicate IP address but I can't see the duplicate device.

Apparently what you do to make hidden devices visible is you run a cmd and

setdevmgs_show_nonpresent_devices=1

Then you run the device manager snap-in (devmgmt.msc) and go to view and select 'show hidden devices',

Now I can see the disabled LAN interface and I just uninstall it.

Back to DHCP - so I tried deleting the lease for my machine from the DHCP management console and doing an ipconfig /renew but I still get the same (wrong) DNS. I tried doing a /release before I did a /renew but still the same.

I broke out wire-shark and found down in the details the DHCP server was handing out the wrong DNS!

Hmm Back to DHCP console. So I right-clicked the server-options and chose configure options. I selected option 6 in the general tab and added the correct DNS servers. I restarted the DHCP server and tried the /release /renew cycle but no luck. Wireshark still sees the wrong address being handed out.

I rebooted the server - still no luck. I checked the logs to see if it was saying anything about the problem but no luck.

I noticed that the reservation for one of my server machines had the wrong DNS server also. I removed it and re-added the reservation - again the DNS was wrong!

I then gave up and deleted the scope and created a new scope. I selected the DNS and WINS servers during the setup options and enabled the scope. /release /renew and voila! It works! Created the reservation and again it gets the right DNS.

God it's hard!