Has anyone upgraded to SP2 and then experienced DNS problems. My specific symptom is that browsers almost always resapond with a "Web Site Not Found"-type error the first time you go to a web site in a while.

More to the point, has anyone found a solution?

Have you checked to see that your primary DNS server is correct? I've seen weird behavior like this when the primary server is wrong or down and it rolls to the secondary -- often the first requests would time-out and fail, but a second request would succeed.

may a "ipconfig /flushdns" helps...

DNS servers are being supplied by DHCP, which hasn't changed, and there's no extraneous stuff in Windows that I can see. Of course, I think there's about a dozen places that might be and I may have missed one.

Also, this is happening on two different computers that have been upgraded to SP2.

Other folks who have suggested that say that it works for a while and then starts back an hour later.

Maybe try shutting down the "DNS Client" service? This forces the machine to query for every address as opposed to looking at cached info.

I'll give that a shot when I get home.

Yup. That seems to have done it.

It's interesting that the description of that service is:

Quote:
Resolves and caches Domain Name System (DNS) names for this computer. If this service is stopped, this computer will not be able to resolve DNS names and locate Active Directory domain controllers. If this service is disabled, any services that explicitly depend on it will fail to start.

Which is patently untrue, since it actually works better without it running.

Hmm. Maybe not. It seems to be better but not cured.

doesn't sound promising.

I was planning to do a fresh install (part of an annual ritual) in my four days break between semesters, using a SP2 slipstreamed win XP pro. has anyone seen/heard of any problems with this type of install?

use it all the time for my work. i feel it gives less problems than upgrading from an earlier version.

I did this recently using nLite.
Support forum.
Apart from slipstreaming in SP2 it also helps in making an un-attended install, removing of components you don't want - including IE, adding in of drivers.
I'm sure I've missed something.

I seem to be noticing DNS problems on my windows machine the last couple of weeks. I don't know if it's SP2 related but it does make me suspicious. I've never seen it before but it's happened a whole bunch of times lately.

Try a Google search for WinsockFix, the Golden Elixir of Life.