How could anyone be so stupid....

So I'm out here in Vegas now, and I'm trying to learn Active Directory and Group Policy and all that jazz. In my home network setup, I have a Win 2003 server (stonewall) and one Win XP profesh client (jupiter). I have 2 more windows computers, but they have the wretched (but cheaper) Win XP Home installed on them. So they can't receive Group Policy commands from stonewall because Windows Home doesn't play well with domain networks.

I'm pulling my hair out because jupiter won't "submit" to any domain GPO's (group policy objects) that I configure using the GPMC (group policy management console) on stonewall. It used to work, but now it won't. So I post a very professional question on Experts-Exchange.com (HELP!!!! this @#$%$! thing won't work!!!) but don't get any helpful replies. So I pull out the big guns. I post a "job" on Guru.com asking someone to please explain to me why jupiter just laughs at the the group policy commands sent down from stonewall. I get many replies, but the one that catches my eye says (paraphrasing) "99.9 percent of the time when there is a problem getting domain level GPOs to work it turns out to be a dns problem. Make sure that the client has the right address (in this case stonewall's address) for its dns server." What an insulting response, I think. But maybe it wouldn't hurt to just take a sec and check that out.......

Oops. From a quick "ipconfig /all" on jupiter, I see that jupiter is configured to use 2 dns servers neither one of which is stonewall. I immediately realize that jupiter is set to get its dns info from my local dhcp server (my Cisco 871w router) and my Cisco 871w just sends jupiter the 2 dns servers that it got (by dhcp) from Cox Communications, my ISP.

So that's the problem. It's not even a group policy problem, it's a basic network setup problem. I don't know the intricacies of Active Directory/Group Policy (yet) but I at least should know clients are supposed to be getting their dns info from their own Domain Controller......

So the Guru.com guy, who bid about the cheapest dollar price of any of the people who responded, fixed my problem without even bothering to hear the details! Wow. That's fine troubleshooting. The man has obviously seen a lot of mangled networks. Most of which probably had admins as dumb as me......