DNS & Subdomain issues (Win7)

We have a Win2003 server running our DNS right now. Currently our clients run Windows XP and all is well.

However, we’re beginning to add Win 7 machines onto the domain and it seems that they can navigate to ALIAS records (like how we have a server called ‘alpha’ but we made a record called ‘beta’ that points to alpha so when people goto http://beta it in essence goes to alpha)

Problem is, when they attempt to goto subdomains, Windows 7 fails completely. Someone said that Vista and 7 will not append on DNS suffixes by default.

When I pinged: alpha.server, it failed to come back.
When I pinged: alpha.server.full.dns, it did come back.

So does anyone know what I need to do to get the Windows 7 rigs to function on our domain? I hope it’s a resolve on the Win 2003 server’s DNS rather than having to hit all the Win 7 rigs.

If you are using DHCP, it is up tot he DHCP server to tell the clients about the “search domain”, Windows Vista / 7 should obey this just like 2000 / XP - I use this functionality at work without issues myself.