Duplicate Name Exists On The Network

Wowzers, this is an annoying message! I spent the better part of Three days trying to crack this for a customer!

Ok so in my scenario, I had 30 PC's coming up with this error at bootup. I think at that point its a fair assumption that there aren't actually 30 PC's all running with duplicate names sitting downstairs in a store cupboard right..?

So first port of call, check the event log. I had something like this:
The name "MYDOMAINNAME/MYPCNAME :0" could not be registered on the Interface with IP address 192.168.1.100. The machine with the IP address 192.168.1.1 did not allow the name to be claimed by this machine.

The SBS in this case was 192.168.1.10 so why is 192.168.1.1 even talking to my machine when it boots up!?

I checked the source of the problem 192.168.1.1 and at first glance couldnt find any problems but then a little more digging and we found out the issue.

192.168.1.1 was a Linux server, named exactly (yes I said exactly) the same as the Internal Domain Name. So guess what, at DHCP request time, it was going off and sourcing DNS and DHCP via a combination of Samba and Windows SBS packets.


I appreciate that this wont be applicable to everyone but when I was trying to find this error where there actually WASNT a numpty who had named two computers the same it came up dry...

By the way, another fix which might help you a little... Put your DC/GC with its domain name Domain.local into hosts and point it to the server IP... Might work?

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 Beta released!

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 Beta is now available on the Microsoft Download Center. Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 enables IT pros to manage roles and features that are installed on remote computers that are running Windows Server 2008 R2 (and, for some roles and features, Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2003) from a remote computer that is running Windows 7.

It includes support for remote management of computers that are running either the Server Core or full installation options of Windows Server 2008 R2, and for some roles and features, Windows Server 2008. Some roles and features on Windows Server 2003 can be managed remotely by using Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7, although the Server Core installation option is not available with the Windows Server 2003 operating system.


Role Administration Tools:

Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) Tools
Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Tools
Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) Tools
DHCP Server Tools
DNS Server Tools
File Services Tools
Hyper-V Tools
Remote Desktop Services Tools


Feature Administration Tools:

BitLocker AD Password Recovery Viewer
Failover Clustering Tools
Group Policy Management Tools
Network Load Balancing Tools
SMTP Server Tools
Storage Explorer Tools
Storage Manager for SANs Tools
Windows System Resource Manager Tools

List of Handy UK DNS Servers

BT Broadband
62.6.40.178
194.72.9.38
194.74.65.69
194.72.9.34
194.72.9.38
194.74.65.68
194.74.65.69
194.72.0.98
194.72.0.114
62.6.40.162
62.6.40.178

Demon
Primary DNS Server:- 158.152.1.58
Secondary DNS Server:- 158.152.1.43

Eclipse
212.104.130.9
212.104.130.65

Plusnet
212.159.13.49
212.159.13.50

Zen
212.23.3.100