You may receive an error message when you run a dcdiag command on a Windows Server 2003-based computer (914058)

SYMPTOMS

You run the dcdiag /test:dns command at a command prompt on a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1)-based computer. When you do this, you may receive an error message that is similar to the following:

Error: Forwarders list has invalid forwarder: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (<name unavailable>) Name resolution is not functional. _ldap._tcp.test.com failed on the DNS server xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Note In this error message, xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is a placeholder for the IP address of the Domain Name System (DNS) server.

CAUSE

This behavior occurs when all the following conditions are true:

You previously configured conditional forwarding on the DNS server.

For example, you previously configured yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy for the DNSServerExample DNS server and xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx for all other DNS servers.

Note In this example, DNSServerExample is a placeholder for the DNS server to which you point the yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy IP address.
You run the dcdiag /test:dns command at a command prompt.

Note When you run the dcdiag /test:dns command, it queries all the conditional forwarders for the DNSServerExample DNS server instead of just querying only the yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy DNS server. The xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx DNS server does not contain the zone for the DNSServerExample DNS server. Therefore, the DNS server does not reply.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

You can safely ignore this error message.

REFERENCES

For more information about conditional forwarding in Windows Server 2003, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

304491 Conditional forwarding in Windows Server 2003