Why can't a PC with 2 network cards be accessed by hostname?

Question

I set up PC with 2 network cards, connected to the same LAN. I can connect to this PC (e.g. by remote desktop) only via IP addresses. Accessing by hostname does not work.

Why is this the case?

UPDATE: Full environment

1. PC with 2 hardware network adapters.
2. On this PC installed VMWare Workstation. Created 3 VM's, networked by "bridged" network setting in VMWare.
3. In LAN all IP addresses given from DHCP.
4. Win2k8 on all hosts (both physical and virtual).
   As result:
5. PC has 2 IP addresses (e.g. 192.168.1.71 and 192.168.1.72). PC available in LAN by IP addresses, but not available by hostname.
6. VM's has own IP address on each (e.g. 192.168.1.73, *74, *75 etc). They are available from LAN by their ip's, BUT not by their hostnames.

How can I access to PC and to VM's by hostname?

Answer 1

The easiest thing would just be to add the entries in your hosts file.

Open, using administrator privileges - your C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts.

This file should already contain a couple lines like:

::1 localhost
127.0.0.1 localhost

Then just add relevant entries:

192.168.0.1 myawesomerouter
192.168.0.10 somethingelse
192.168.0.100 ahundred.domain.org
192.168.2.40 mygooglecopy.google.com

You can also use this to "blackhole" some sites, for example if you never wanted to communicate with www.google.com you could add the line:

127.0.0.1 www.google.com

Answer 2

Hostname resolution is typically handled by your router. Your IP configuration probably has your router's IP address as the DNS server. If that's the case, then the router will resolve the hostname to the local IP address. If you have your system set to use alternate DNS servers, like Google's 8.8.8.8, then hostname resolution may fail.