Browser master problems

[Bill]

Help! I run a small network of about 20 or so PCs with Win98, 2000 and
XP OSs running and recently ran into a problem with the network
neighborhood. Every thing was fine up till a few weeks ago when someone
came to me with a laptop running XP and a problem with viewing shared
file over the network. When you clicked on 'computers near you' you got
an error saying you didn't have permissions or the list was unavailable.
He had recently updated the laptop through dell/microsoft so I figured
some setting got botched up and told him to drop it by my office and I'd
look into it. Meanwhile I started to discover that many of the other PCs
were also having problems, either nothing in the network neighborhood or
other errors depending on which OS was running. I started to dig into
this and it looked like some kind of problem with 'master browsers' or
something so to help eliminate problems I removed all protocals but
tcp/ip with netbios over it and turned off every computer browser service
or master browser on every pc but a single Windows 2000 machine. Now I
get either no workgroup list available or network not available and
nothing I do seems to fix this. We are running a workgroup only no
domain server and I do have a samba file server running which I tried to
get to be both Wins server and master browser but the only thing that
succeded in doing was showing the samba share directories and the local
machine but no other PCs. I've turned off all extra interfaces on the
original win2000 target machine but right now 'browstat status' still
shows the following:
------------------------------------------------------------
Status for domain ADM NET on transport \Device\NetBT_Tcpip_{20B25278-
DF4D-438D-8456-E97EEC3E7319}
Browsing is NOT active on domain.
Master name cannot be determined from GetAdapterStatus.
------------------------------------------------------------

'ADM NET' is out workgroup name.

Here is the ipconfig /all output:
-------------------------------------------------------------
Windows 2000 IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : isspecialist
Primary DNS Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcast
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : Yes
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit
Ethernet
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-E0-81-27-EA-7A
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 100.0.0.50
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 100.0.0.8
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 66.109.229.4
66.109.229.5
66.109.229.6

-------------------------------------------------------------

I've even tried reactivating a win98 and XP as Browser masters but still
don't see anything.

Where do I go next???

Bill

 

[John Wunderlich]

Help! I run a small network of about 20 or so PCs with Win98,
2000 and XP OSs running and recently ran into a problem with the
network neighborhood. Every thing was fine up till a few weeks
ago when someone came to me with a laptop running XP and a problem
with viewing shared file over the network. When you clicked on
'computers near you' you got an error saying you didn't have
permissions or the list was unavailable. He had recently updated
the laptop through dell/microsoft so I figured some setting got
botched up and told him to drop it by my office and I'd look into
it. Meanwhile I started to discover that many of the other PCs
were also having problems, either nothing in the network
neighborhood or other errors depending on which OS was running. I
started to dig into this and it looked like some kind of problem
with 'master browsers' or something so to help eliminate problems
I removed all protocals but tcp/ip with netbios over it and turned
off every computer browser service or master browser on every pc
but a single Windows 2000 machine. Now I get either no workgroup
list available or network not available and nothing I do seems to
fix this. We are running a workgroup only no domain server and I
do have a samba file server running which I tried to get to be
both Wins server and master browser but the only thing that
succeded in doing was showing the samba share directories and the
local machine but no other PCs. I've turned off all extra
interfaces on the original win2000 target machine but right now
'browstat status' still shows the following:

[...]

I have experienced something like this in the past. The problem
turned out to be one computer on the network that had a Firewall
program installed. Microsoft Networking is very dependent on
broadcasts to do browser elections and often firewalled computers
will broadcast out but not listen to broadcastst coming in. This
results in multiple Browse Masters being "elected" when elections
occur -- the firewalled computer doesn't "listen" so it won't hear
of anything other than it being the chosen one. In addition, a
legitamite machine will become Browse master and fight the
firewalled machine for a while, ultimately giving up leaving the
firewalled machine as browse master which will refuse connections
from everyone else and bring down the browsing.

Go ahead and re-enable the Computer Browser service on all computers
in your subnet. Then get on one computer and issue a "browstat
tic" and/or "browstat el" command to force an election on the
subnet. Then over the next 10 or so minutes or so, do a "browstat
vw" command looking for more than one machine in the subnet with
"MBR" status. When you see this, one of the machines is legit and
the other is causing the problem. Once the problem machine(s) is
located, use the service manager to stop and disable the Computer
Browser service on that machine only (or fix/remove the firewall
program).

HTH,
John

 

[Guest]

Hey Bill,


I had the same issue with our company network, i had to Setup a Wins server
on the domain controller and dish out the info via DHCP. I am running 2003
and no issue


Hope this helps