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I've got a Windows 2003 Guest VM, running, I believe, on Parallels, leased from 1and1.com (so I don't have access to the physical host machine). This machine has recently (not sure when) stopped doing DNS resolution, e.g., a ping to google.come returns "Ping request could not find host google.com.", and other apps running on the machine complain about DNS resolution failing.

Here's what I've checked:

  • The IP addresses to use for DNS seem to be configured correctly.
  • I can ping those DNS servers (from the guest VM) and all other IP addresses that I've tried.
  • An nslookup against those servers works correctly.
  • Oddly enough, when I first checked it, the "DNS Client" service wasn't running, and was set to "Manual" startup. But I set it to "Automatic", rebooted, confirmed that it was running, and still can't resolve.

I haven't spotted anything particularly damning in the event logs. The first error-level stuff that shows up is the W32Time service complaining that DNS lookup has failed. But immediately after that I do get this error:

Event ID 7000: The NetGroup Packet Filter Driver service failed to start due to the following error: This driver has been blocked from loading.

Ipconfig /all looks like this:

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : S15332843
Primary Dns Suffix  . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Peer-Peer
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter venet0:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Parallels Virtual Network Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-FF-C5-A9-84-9B
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 74.208.74.114
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.41.217
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 8.8.8.8
                                   8.8.4.4
                                   195.20.224.99

Anything else that I should check?

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    Out of curiosity, try removing all but one DNS server and try again. I had an issue where the third of my 3 DNS servers wasn't working properly and for whatever reason the Windows 7 box wouldn't try with the other two. As soon as I removed the "bad" DNS server, it started working. It doesn't make sense, but it fixed it. Same symptoms though, nslookup worked, but normal name resolution wouldn't.
    – Safado
    Sep 14, 2011 at 21:49
  • nslookup uses it's own DNS client resolver so if that works against your configured DNS servers then I'd say the problem is with the DNS client. Is there anything in the event log?
    – joeqwerty
    Sep 14, 2011 at 21:52
  • Good suggestions. I removed all but 8.8.8.8 (Google's public DNS server), and it still fails. I checked the event logs (edited above to note this) and the only possibly interesting event is this one: "Event ID 7000: The NetGroup Packet Filter Driver service failed to start due to the following error: This driver has been blocked from loading." No idea what that signifies, but I'll keep poking around.
    – Ken Smith
    Sep 14, 2011 at 22:07
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    I'd be looking at removing low level networking things (WireShark/WinPCap, any 3rd party VPN software, antivirus, 3rd party firewalls) and retesting, or wondering about malware as a possibility. Another thing you could do is set your DNS server to an IP you control, and on that IP run a listener on UDP port 53 and then see if it is receiving DNS traffic OK, or run a DNS server and see if the DNS server is being queried at all. Sep 14, 2011 at 22:46
  • I did have WireShark/WinPcap installed, but I removed them, and no joy. No VPN software. No AV. No 3rd party firewalls. (I tried disabling the MS firewall, but it still had the same problem.) I'll keep poking.
    – Ken Smith
    Sep 15, 2011 at 6:56

1 Answer 1

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Turns out that it was a problem with the Parallels host software. The admins at 1&1 had to install a hotfix to resolve it. Fixed now. Thanks for all the troubleshooting suggestions.

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