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Hey everyone,

I'm still trying to get DNS setup correctly. I decided to pretty much start from scratch and use Microsoft's article 5171. I'm using MyCompany.com as our Domain and I put that in for the DNS as well. All of the other AD folders show up in my Forward Lookup Zone, but not the _MSDCS. What does this do, and how do I get it to show up?

Thanks guys,

:cheesy:

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Dani AI

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Good catch, — the _msdcs subdomain is not an optional folder: it holds the SRV and related records that let clients and other DCs locate LDAP, Kerberos and Global Catalog services for your domain. Those SRV records are created/maintained by the Netlogon service and appear under Forward Lookup Zones → <your-domain> → _msdcs (and site-specific folders). (learn.microsoft.com)

If restarting Netlogon made the folder appear, that’s exactly what happened: Netlogon attempted to re-register the DC locator and A records. If the change didn’t persist, or the records never appear, check these common causes — the zone must be authoritative for the AD domain and allow the type of dynamic updates the DC needs; the DC’s DNS client settings must point to an internal DNS server that hosts the AD zone (not only to an external ISP); and if you use non‑Microsoft DNS you may need to copy the Netlogon.dns content into the remote DNS server because Netlogon uses that file as the list of records it tries to register. (learn.microsoft.com)

Quick, practical checks and commands to run from the DC (run elevated):

  • Verify the Netlogon cache (what the DC is trying to register): open the Netlogon.dns text file on the DC (%systemroot%\System32\Config). (learn.microsoft.com)

  • Force host registration and test DNS registration with DCDiag:

    ipconfig /registerdns
dcdiag /test:DNS /DnsRecordRegistration /v

    Use nslookup (set type=all) to query _ldap._tcp.dc._msdcs.<yourdomain> if you want to see SRV answers. (learn.microsoft.com)

If those tests fail, confirm the AD‑integrated zone’s dynamic-update setting and check the System/Directory Service event logs for Netlogon/DNS errors. If using a non‑Microsoft DNS server, hand the Netlogon.dns entries to the DNS admin or create the required SRV/A/CNAME records manually. If all else fails, run the full dcdiag DNS tests and inspect the report for the specific registration failures to guide the next step. (learn.microsoft.com)

Member Avatar for Duki

I seem to be answering my own questions rather often on here....

Answer:

Goto Command Prompt; type the following

net stop netlogon
net start netlogon

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