My Network Places related question

[Guest]

Can anybody tell me what the mechanism is that causes workgroups to show up
in My Network Places-->Entire Network-->Microsoft Windows Network. I have a
bunch of obsolete workgroups showing up here, and I don't know how to remove
them. Is this WINS related? I can't find anything that talks specifically
about this.
-jamie-

 

[Herb Martin]

Can anybody tell me what the mechanism is that causes workgroups to show up
in My Network Places-->Entire Network-->Microsoft Windows Network. I have a
bunch of obsolete workgroups showing up here, and I don't know how to remove
them. Is this WINS related?

Yes. Usually.

Sinces WINS is used to find such names and since
WINS is a database that might persist AFTER the
names are no longer in use.

I can't find anything that talks specifically
about this.

Browsing is a NetBIOS application and WINS is a
NetBIOS name server.

Go into the WINS server(s) and delete references to
those Workgroups that you are sure are no longer in
use -- you may have to "take ownership" of some
records first.

Ownership is usually related to the problem since if
an owning WINS server is down names might not get
scavenged if they belong to that WINS server.