Have Skills, Will Travel Charles Armour

Vista DNS Suffix Fix

I was having trouble with Vista on my laptop occasionally failing to resolve a hostname (very likely over wireless), at which point it would append its local DNS suffix before re-trying.  Since my DNS suffix is a real domain with a catch-all sub-domain, I was having a lot of trouble with websites and the like resolving to my router rather than their proper addresses.  This is in part due to my DHCP config, which specifies the domain-name option.

Amazingly, I could find no guidance online except mentions of changing your Active Directory Domain or using the Hosts file for certain systems you need to reach.  These solutions did not apply nor appeal to me, so I set out to figure out a way to get Vista properly resolving.  Here are instructions that will disable local domain suffix resolution on Vista, tested with Vista Ultimate x64:

1. Open Control Panel, click on Network and Internet, then click on Network and Sharing Center to get to the networking center.
2. Click on Manage network connections (in Tasks on the left) to open the network connections folder.
3. Right click on Local Area Connection (or another network device) and click on Properties to bring up the connection properties dialog.
4. Double click on Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) to bring up the protocol properties dialog.
5. Click the Advanced… button to bring up the advanced protocol settings dialog, then select the DNS tab to switch to advanced DNS settings.
6. Select the Append these DNS suffixes (in order): option, then click on Add… to bring up the domain suffix dialog.
7. Type in a single period (.), then click on Add to create the null domain suffix (which actually tricks windows into appending nothing).
8. Click Ok, Ok, Ok, and close out the rest of the windows.  Changes should take effect after closing the connection properties dialog.

I’m fairly sure others have encountered this issue, so let me know how this works out for you.