Workgroup suddenly inaccessible

[CurtF]

Something has occurred that has suddenly made the
workgroup group inaccessible on our network. We can
access individual computers if we know their NetBios
names, but if we click on "computers near me" we get a
message stating that Workgroup is inaccessible and the
network path could not be found. All the machines
have "Workgroup" as the network id. A Win2000 Server has
just joined the network, but it has NOT yet been
configured as a domain controller and also uses workgroup
as its network id. Any clues?

Thanx
CurtF

 

[David Tesar]

Curt,

You are having a network browsing issue. If this problem happened after
you installed the Windows 2000 server (which is very possible), then I
might check to see if the windows 2000 server has multiple interfaces (i.e.
multiple network cards, an RRAS VPN interface) which can be checked by
doing an ipconfig /all. If any of these interfaces are not accessible by
all of the client machines on your network, then this may cause your
problem because the browsing transport is active on interfaces that the
backup browsers can not access. You can then disable that interface which
is not accessible. Also, you might want to try powering down the Windows
2000 server and then restarting the computer browser service on the client
machines in your network. The following article may also help:
188305 Troubleshooting the Microsoft Computer Browser Service
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=188305

David Tesar
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