Network places disappearing

[Greg Mohr]

I am having a new problem that just popped up about a week ago. 4 PC's in a
peer-to-peer network, 3 XP Pro, 1 W2K acting as a data store. The shared
drives on the XP PC's used to show up in network places, but the Admin PC,
just stopped displaying them about a week ago. I can map the drives, but
they will no longer display in network places. Shares are being created and
removed from the 2 other XP clients every couple of weeks. It is too much
for me to go in to the office and map drives for this small location. Any
suggestions?

TIA,

Greg

 

[Chuck]

I am having a new problem that just popped up about a week ago. 4 PC's in a
peer-to-peer network, 3 XP Pro, 1 W2K acting as a data store. The shared
drives on the XP PC's used to show up in network places, but the Admin PC,
just stopped displaying them about a week ago. I can map the drives, but
they will no longer display in network places. Shares are being created and
removed from the 2 other XP clients every couple of weeks. It is too much
for me to go in to the office and map drives for this small location. Any
suggestions?

Greg,

You have browser subsystem problems.

Make sure the browser service is running on each computer. Control Panel -
Administrative Tools - Services. Verify that the Computer Browser, and the
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper, services both show with Status = Started.

The Microsoft Browstat program will show us what browsers you have in your
domain / workgroup, at any time.
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=188305

You can download Browstat from:
<http://www.dynawell.com/reskit/microsoft/win2000/browstat.zip>
<http://rescomp.stanford.edu/staff/manual/rcc/tools/browstat.zip>

Browstat is very small (40K), needs no install, and runs from the command
prompt. Just drop it onto a couple workstations, and run it.

For more information about the browser subsystem (very intricate), see:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=188001
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=188305
<http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winntas/deploy/prodspecs/ntbrowse.mspx>

You need to look carefully at what computer is your master browser. The master
browser needs to be the one that is consistently most available.

And Greg, please don't contribute to the spread and success of email address
mining viruses. Learn to munge your email address properly, to keep yourself a
bit safer when posting to open forums. Protect yourself and the rest of the
internet - read this article.
http://www.mailmsg.com/SPAM_munging.htm

Cheers,
Chuck
Paranoia comes from experience - and is not necessarily a bad thing.