W2000 Pro M.I.A. in a Workgroup

[Roger S.]

I have a 3-machine SOHO network consisting of 1 W2000 Adv
Server & 2 W2000 Pro Workstations. The server has 2 NICs,
1 for LAN & 1 for the internet (via cable modem). All is
well EXCEPT that my main workstation cannot see any of the
other machines. If I click on "Entire Network", the
response is "Unable to browse the network. The network is
not present or not started." But I CAN ping the other
machines and access the internet via the server (which has
assigned this workstation an IP via DHCP). Also, this
workstation has shared folders which the server and the
other w/s can see just fine. All are in the same workgroup
(no domain).

About the only clue I have at the moment is this
workstation is not a new build/install and used to
participate in a domain. The server and the other w/s are
new systems and they interact without any problems. All 3
have a 30-day trial (for now) of F-Prot. I DE-installed
McAfee (and deleted files/directories) from this machine
last week before completing the systems.

 

[Marina Roos]

Check the bindingorder on the server and make sure the internal nic is on
top.
The internal nic should have a blank gateway.
Got File and Printersharing loaded on each station?
Do all useraccounts exist on all machines?

Marina

 

[Roger S.]

Check, check, check & check. No change.

-----Original Message-----
Check the bindingorder on the server and make sure the internal nic is on
top.
The internal nic should have a blank gateway.
Got File and Printersharing loaded on each station?
Do all useraccounts exist on all machines?

Marina

"Roger S." <[email protected]> schreef in bericht



.

 

[Marina Roos]

Does the ipconfig/all show that everything (!!!) is pointing to your
server-IP?
Got DNS and DHCP installed on the server?

Marina

 

[Roger S.]

Server is at 192.168.0.1. As you can see from this
workstation, all is pointing to server.

Ethernet adapter LAN:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : attbi.com
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : NVIDIA nForce
MCP Networking Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-0C-6E-C5-EE-
E4
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.26
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Wednesday,
November 05, 2003 3:10:43 PM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Friday,
November 14, 2003 3:10:43 PM

 

[Marina Roos]

Is this the workstation that was joined before?
Go to My computer, Properties, Network Identification, properties, More,
delete the DNS-suffix.
Check the TCP/IP-properties, tab DNS to see if that suffix is there and
delete it.

Marina

 

[Roger S.]

Found no suffixes in either. Another clue might be that in
explorer under "My Network Places", there is no "Computers
Near Me". I found an article in the KB about how to
restore (2 methods) and it has not yet sucessfully been
restored.

 

[Marina Roos]

So, where is this attbi.com coming from then?

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : attbi.com

Have you tried removing TCP/IP, reboot and reinstall it again?

Marina

 

[Roger S.]

Found the cause (thanks again Mr. Gates! grrrrr). Well
last night I got desperate and decided to bite

the bullet and do a clean install. So not wishing to lose
everything completely, I made a backup of

the partition with PQM8. So now with a clean install an a
new partition, everything will be fine...

NOT! Same BS! Cannot see the rest of the workgroup no
matter what - yet the rest of the workgroup can

see all of the shared folders on this workstation just
fine.

That was a lot of time wasted so I decided to find a way
to work around this issue and get back to wokr on my
project. This morning I started to put things back with
PQM8 and by accident, I chose the "wrong" system to boot
from (via c:\boot.ini) and, VOILA, there was the workgroup.

Here's what made the difference. The accidental choice was:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(9)\WINNT="Windows 2000
Professional Workstation (#1)" /fastdetect
When what I meant to choose was:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(11)\WINNT="Microsoft
Windows 2000 Professional (#1)" /fastdetect

Best I can figure, if your W2K system partition is > 9 (or
maybe 10), you're screwed when trying to use a workgroup.
Interesting that the system doesn't care that it was
booting from the second hard drive, just didn't like the
11th partition.

BTW, to answer your question, attbi.com is Comcast's cable
modem (formerly ATT Broadband) which the workstation was
getting from the server, but via IP and not the LAN
workgroup.

 

[Marina Roos]

Hi Roger,

Glad you've got it solved.
But can you explain to me why you have more than 10 partitions?

Marina

 

[Roger S.]

Back in the days when there were limits on partition size
(or performance hits) I wrote a lot of source code. Guess
lots of partitions is less trouble than changing all of my
references which PQ's drivemapper won't resolve. One of
these days when I finally get some free(???) time...