alastairs's questions

I'm seeing some odd behaviour with SQL Server 2012 Express Edition, where a sysadmin user does not have permission to create databases.

The evolution of this installation has been somewhat trying:

• Host machine initialised
• SQL Server 2012 Express Edition installed on Virtual Machine
• Host machine renamed and joined to the domain
• Domain rebuilt and machine re-joined to the domain

The sysadmin user that is suffering the problems is a domain user. The user appears in the Security -> Logins node in SSMS, and the sysadmin box is checked on the user's "Server Roles" properties. However, the sysadmin properties don't appear to have "taken": when I log into SSMS as this user, I don't see ~80% of the users configured on this server, and the CREATE DATABASE permissions are denied. There are probably other symptoms hiding as well.

I have read this related question, and I do not believe I am suffering the same problem: the solution proposed in that question is to make the problematic user a sysadmin, which I have already done.

I have a small network of computers which mostly access stuff online. I have a domain controller running on that network, which is also serving as the DHCP and DNS server.

I have configured DHCP (using the Scope Options) to provide the following IP addresses as the DNS servers for the network:

• 192.168.0.31 (my LAN DNS server, the primary DNS server)
• 8.8.8.8 (Google's DNS server, the secondary DNS server)

The DNS server addresses are being correctly handed out to the DHCP clients. However, I cannot resolve any LAN domain names using this pair of DNS servers, even using their FQDNs. If I remove Google's DNS server from the list, I can resolve LAN domain names but not anything online. It takes a little while (30 mins?) for the resolution of online domain names to stop working; presumably this is something to do with the DNS cache?

The same thing happens if I add Google's DNS server to the DHCP client manually, in addition to my LAN DNS server.

Obviously I've configured something incorrectly, or have missed a step (do I need to set up DNS forwarding, perhaps?). Any help you can provide will be gratefully received!

Is there a built-in command line tool that will do reverse DNS look-ups in Windows? I.e., something like <toolname> w.x.y.z => mycomputername

I've tried:

• nslookup: seems to be forward look-up only.
• host: doesn't exist
• dig: also doesn't exist.

I found "What's the reverse DNS command line utility?" via a search, but this is specifically looking for a *nix utility, not a Windows one.