NetBIOS not working between SP1 na d SP2 clients

[d28]

I think I'm experiencing a NetBIOS problem between my WinXP SP1 and SP2
clients on my LAN. I have 5 machines, 2 are SP2 clients and the 3
others are SP1 clients. I recently change a static IP address on one of
SP1 machines and then reestablished the shares. From the SP1 machines I
could connect immediately to the shares on the machine with the changed
IP address. However, I could not connect to the shares from the SP2
clients at all until I rebooted the SP2 machines.

 

[Doug Sherman [MVP]]

Probably this is just coincidence. If the SP2 machines had recently
resolved the the name of the SP1 machine, they would cache the results for
10 minutes. A Windows computer which has a cache entry for the destination
machine will not look to the browse list and won't get the benefit of an
update until the cache is flushed. The cache entry is flushed automatically
by time; or you can flush the entire cache with nbtstat - R; or of course,
reboot.

Doug Sherman
MCSE Win2k/NT4.0, MCSA, MCP+I, MVP

 

[d28]

That makes perfect sense to me, thanks. In the Windows environment,
with all machines having the Computer Browser service active, is there
a way to determine which machine is the browse master (I'm using a
Linux term here)? Or as you mentioned, the SP2 machines have to wait
for some period of time for the machine with the new IP address to push
out its new network information for the other clients to know how to
locate it.

 

[Doug Sherman [MVP]]

On the XP CD, install the Support Tools (CD Drive:\Support\Tools.

The tool you want is called browstat.exe - pretty cool, and it will tell you
everything you want to know about the browse status of your network.

Doug Sherman
MCSE Win2k/NT4.0, MCSA, MCP+I, MVP