machines not showing up in Network Neighborhood

[Sandra L Miller]

We have a domain of approximately 250 Windows XP workstations, with
2 Windows 2003 Servers as domain controllers. The workstations are
spread over 3 student labs, many desktop machines, and some laptops.
Two of the student labs are in remote buildings.

Our problem is that the 48 machines that are in the student lab that
is in the same building as the domain controllers, on the same IP
subnet, are not showing up in Network Neighborhood. All other machines
in the domain show up, including those in the remote student labs, one
of which is on a separate IP subnet.

Strangely, this seemed to happen slowly over time, with machines
dropping off one by one until now none of them show up. The machines
can be pinged, and I can log on to them remotely, and they are getting
updates, etc. In other words, nothing seems to be wrong with the
connections, they just do not show up in Network Neighborhood.

This is a mystery I would like to solve for its own sake, but also
because machines that don't show up in Network Neighborhood, also do
not show up in the Sophos Enterprise Manager's SAVAdmin, which is
what we use to monitor the status of our virus checking software.
I cannot push a configuration to those machines.

I am at a loss as to what the problem might be. Can anyone give me
ideas as to what to look for?

TIA,
Sandy

--
Sandra L Miller
Windows System Administrator
Department of Computer Science
University of Arizona

"The opinions or statements expressed herein are my own and should not be
taken as a position, opinion, or endorsement of the University of Arizona."

 

[Guest]

Do the machines reside in one big IP subnet / segment? If the answer is no,
which is a good and right thing to do, you will need to have WINS Servers
setup in the infrastructure. All client machines must have the IP of these
WINS Servers in order that they can be properly registered and made available
(via browsing for example).

Depending on the default built-in browsing mechanisms is not something one
can rely on in a huge Windows network.

Do let us know if this helps. Thanks!

 

[Sandra L Miller]

Thanks for your help. We do have WINS servers set up, and all the
workstations point to them.

The problem was that the machines were all pointing to a particular
machine as their Browse Master, and that machine was not doing a
"good job". I still don't know why that machine was misbehaving,
but getting a different machine to act as the Browse Master has
solved our immediate problem.

Thanks for your help.

Do the machines reside in one big IP subnet / segment? If the answer is no,
which is a good and right thing to do, you will need to have WINS Servers
setup in the infrastructure. All client machines must have the IP of these
WINS Servers in order that they can be properly registered and made available
(via browsing for example).

Depending on the default built-in browsing mechanisms is not something one
can rely on in a huge Windows network.

Do let us know if this helps. Thanks!


:

--
Sandra L Miller
Windows System Administrator
Department of Computer Science
University of Arizona

"The opinions or statements expressed herein are my own and should not be
taken as a position, opinion, or endorsement of the University of Arizona."

 

[Markeau]

Did you look in the event viewer to see what, if any, errors were
occurring?
Start > Run > eventvwr

 

[Sandra L Miller]

Nothing in there.

Did you look in the event viewer to see what, if any, errors were
occurring?
Start > Run > eventvwr

--
Sandra L Miller
Windows System Administrator
Department of Computer Science
University of Arizona

"The opinions or statements expressed herein are my own and should not be
taken as a position, opinion, or endorsement of the University of Arizona."