Question : Tally fails to get license from server

Tally accounting package, version 9, is installed on several PCs, all running Windows XP, SP 2 and members of a Windows domain.
The domain control also runs the Tally license server, the Microsoft DHCP server and Microsoft DNS server. The client computers all have their primary DNS server set to the address of the domain controller.

The tally.ini file for the clients specifies the license server by its IP address.

The server can be pinged from failing clients and a telnet to port 9000 connects.

Immediately after rebooting the server the clients are able to obtain a license, but after some time (less than an hour) the error returns.

If the clients primary DNS server address is set to an external DNS server, or even to an unused IP address, then Tally successfully gets its license.

Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Chris.

Answer : Tally fails to get license from server

I think I have resolved this one.

The Tally client talks to the license server using HTTP, albeit to port 9000. It was looking at Internet Explorer's proxy configuration to decide whether it should use a proxy itself. I was blocking all access through Squid before 18:00, and incidentally blocking access to the license server.

Internet Explorer got its proxy information from a wpad.dat file. When there was no DNS server it could not find the web server that hosted the wpad.dat file so it communicated directly.

I still cannot explain why it worked for a while after the server was rebooted.