I have a DNS server set up on one of my machines using BIND 9.7 Everything works fine with it. On my Windows 7 desktop, I have statically-assigned all network values. I have one DNS server set -- my DNS server. On my desktop,

 I can ping a third machine by IP fine.
 I can nslookup the hostname of the third machine fine.
 When I ping the hostname, it says it cannot find the host.

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C:\Users\James>nslookup icecream
Server:  cake.my.domain
Address:  xxx.xxx.6.3

Name:    icecream.my.domain
Address:  xxx.xxx.6.9


C:\Users\James>ping xxx.xxx.6.9

Pinging xxx.xxx.6.9 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from xxx.xxx.6.9: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255
Reply from xxx.xxx.6.9: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255
Reply from xxx.xxx.6.9: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255
Reply from xxx.xxx.6.9: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255

Ping statistics for xxx.xxx.6.9:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

C:\Users\James>ping icecream
Ping request could not find host icecream. Please check the name and try again.

I have also specified the search domain as my.domain

• xxx.xxx and my.domain substituted for security

Why can I not ping by hostname? I also can not ping using the FQDN. The problem is that this problem is shared by all applications that resolve hostnames. I cannot use PuTTY to SSH to my machines by hostname; only by IP