Hi,
We have a strange problem with 2 laptops (XP Pro). Working fine for
some time, they suddenly were prevented from accessing network
printers and drives. I was able to ping the domain server (Win 2000
Server) successfully. We don't use DHCP and have IP addresses set for
each machine on the network. Going in to the network properties, I was
able to get them to see the printers and drives again by changing one
of the DNS addresses from our ISP supplied address to the address of
our server. However that then prevented the laptops from accessing the
Internet. Does anyone know what might be causing this? All other
clients are working fine.

Mark wrote:
> Hi,
> We have a strange problem with 2 laptops (XP Pro). Working fine for
> some time, they suddenly were prevented from accessing network
> printers and drives. I was able to ping the domain server (Win 2000
> Server) successfully. We don't use DHCP and have IP addresses set for
> each machine on the network. Going in to the network properties, I was
> able to get them to see the printers and drives again by changing one
> of the DNS addresses from our ISP supplied address to the address of
> our server. However that then prevented the laptops from accessing the
> Internet. Does anyone know what might be causing this? All other
> clients are working fine.

DNS doesn't have anything to do with network browsing, however in a
Windows domain, domain member computers MUST use ONLY the internal AD
DNS server. If you don't want your DNS server performing web lookups,
you should forward requests to your ISP. A Windows domain WILL NOT
function without a properly configured DNS server. If you can't access
the web without configuring your clients to use your ISP's DNS server,
you either have an internal DNS server misconfiguration, or your
internal DNS server cannot access the Internet.

That said, the ability to browse the network has everything to do with
NetBIOS over TCP/IP. Make sure this is enabled in TCP/IP properties
(advanced button, WINS tab). In most organizations large enough to
require active directory, and who rely on browsing to access resources,
WINS is usually used for name resolution. WINS also allows "browsing"
across routed subnets because the WINS server provides the information
instead of NetBIOS broadcasts. If you are running WINS, make sure the
WINS server is up and running, and that clients have a WINS server
specified. If yo are not running WINS, I'd consider it. Since you are
not using DHCP, you'll have to configure each client manually to use the
WINS server, so maybe this would be a goo time to set up DHCP so you
won't have to visit every client every time you make a change.

....kurt