I have a new W2K server with 10 W2K Pro. clients. I can't browse to any computers at all. I can ping by name and address both and all is well. I can log on to the domain. All the clients receive the script that maps drives on logon. They all connect to the shared net work drives on the server. Yet I cannot browse to any computers let alone see any shares on the clients.(when trying to browse the network from a client I get an access denied or domain does not exist message - that's crap. I have admin rights every where and the domain is there) In DNS I can see the RR for all the computers. Why can't I browse to the computers in My Network Places? All clients point to the DNS server. The DNS server points to itself. They can all go out the internet just fine through my router. This is driving me crazy. It must be a name resolution problem in DNS but what???? Please help.
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Can't Browse PC's on my W2K Domain
- Thread starter rstill
- Start date
It's unlikely to be DNS as W2K still uses NetBIOS for things like the Computer Browser service. Going through everything to check would take too long here, so here's an excellent link to an article which explains what to check:
Cheers, Antony
Cheers, Antony
- Thread starter
- #3
Thanks for the tip but I am running a 100% W2K Domain. It uses AD and not the NT browser service. To give you a quote from the article to pointed me to: "In Windows 2000—based networks, Active Directory (AD) replaces the Computer Browser service." Unless I am missing something here are yuo saying I still need to set up WINS? (actually I did anyway to try to get the sucker to browse - that was a week ago or so)
Thanks anyway. I will keep digging.
Thanks anyway. I will keep digging.
jasonboyes
IS-IT--Management
No but do need DNS.
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You running win2k domain controller but are your clients win2k machines or win98 too. If so you need to check weather you have enabled "file and printer" sharing on win98 clients also some weird things might be caused by the workgroup name in win98 machines although you have win2k DC.
Regards,
Regards,
Hi rstill,
The article is right in that AD does replace the Computer Browser service if you set it up to. To do this, you need to publish shared folders into Active Directory. What you're doing is trying to browse through Network Neighborhood (or My Network Places) which uses the same old Computer Browser service as was used in 95,98 and NT and this still relies on WINS.
Claims that W2K only uses DNS are false - if you completely set up your network to run through Active Directory and nothing else, then yes, you only need DNS. If you live in the real world and still rely on the services that use NetBIOS (such as the Browser service) as most of us do, then I'm afraid you still need WINS.
Cheers, Antony
The article is right in that AD does replace the Computer Browser service if you set it up to. To do this, you need to publish shared folders into Active Directory. What you're doing is trying to browse through Network Neighborhood (or My Network Places) which uses the same old Computer Browser service as was used in 95,98 and NT and this still relies on WINS.
Claims that W2K only uses DNS are false - if you completely set up your network to run through Active Directory and nothing else, then yes, you only need DNS. If you live in the real world and still rely on the services that use NetBIOS (such as the Browser service) as most of us do, then I'm afraid you still need WINS.
Cheers, Antony
- Thread starter
- #7
I am running a 100% w2k domain(all w2k clients and one w2k DC). The DC is NOT set up for pre w2k machines at all, therefore I should not need WINS. As Antony mentioned maybe I do still need to get things working with WINS. It sounds like my problem is in AD??. I have done nothing there. Any tips on how to set up AD? How do I publish shares or computers to AD? I only travel to the small town I have this network in once a week. I wish I had the time check things out more between replies.
rstill,
Active Directory itself relies on the DNS service. Therefore, when clients authenticate to a domain controller, they use DNS to get the DC's IP address. When clients access Active Directory e.g. doing a search on someone's name, they use DNS to get the domain controllers address to query it. However, when a client accesses another computer e.g. through network neighborhood > Entire Network > Microsoft Windows Network or by going Start > Run and typing \\servername, it is looking for the NetBIOS name of the machine rather than the fully qualified domain name (FQDN). The client relies either on a Lmhosts file or a WINS server to get this name, whereas it relies on a hosts file or DNS to get a FQDN. The difference between the NetBIOS name of a machine and the DNS name in look is simply whether it has the domain name attached to it e.g. for a server called Server1 in the company.com domain, the NetBIOS name is SERVER1 and the DNS name is server1.company.com.
I also run a network using only W2K machines but W2K machines (clients and servers) do need WINS when resolving NetBIOS names and this is what the Computer Browser service uses when it publishes its list.
If you really want to avoid using WINS (and even with this, you'll probably still need it to access some applications) you can publish shares in AD. To publish a share in Active Directory, within Active Directory Users and Computers, right click on the OU where you want to keep the network share and choose New > Shared Folder. Give the Shared Folder a name (usually the same as the share) and then type in the path to that share ie. \\Server\Sharename and click OK. If you want, you can then right click on this Shared Folder within the OU and click Properties. You can then set keywords so people can search Active Directory for shared folders using these keywords e.g. for the Sales and Marketing area, perhaps shared as S&M, you could add keywords "Sales" and "Marketing".
For clients to access this share, they go into My Network Place > Entire Network > Directory. They can either browse through the structure to the OU where you published the shared folder and double click on it (in this case, it's using DNS to locate the share as it's using Active Directory to find it) or they can right click on the domain here and click Find. Now, set the Find: box to Shared Folders and either type in the name of the share or type in a keyword to help them (e.g. in the above example, they could type either "sales" or "marketing" in as a keyword. This would locate the share they were after and when double clicking on it, take them to the correct place.
My recommendation is to set up a WINS server even if you do publish all your shares in Active Directory. Get your servers to register with it by putting your WINS server's IP address in the WINS properties of the IP settings of the server and change DHCP so that clients get this IP address for their WINS server. This should then sort all your problems.
Cheers, Antony
Active Directory itself relies on the DNS service. Therefore, when clients authenticate to a domain controller, they use DNS to get the DC's IP address. When clients access Active Directory e.g. doing a search on someone's name, they use DNS to get the domain controllers address to query it. However, when a client accesses another computer e.g. through network neighborhood > Entire Network > Microsoft Windows Network or by going Start > Run and typing \\servername, it is looking for the NetBIOS name of the machine rather than the fully qualified domain name (FQDN). The client relies either on a Lmhosts file or a WINS server to get this name, whereas it relies on a hosts file or DNS to get a FQDN. The difference between the NetBIOS name of a machine and the DNS name in look is simply whether it has the domain name attached to it e.g. for a server called Server1 in the company.com domain, the NetBIOS name is SERVER1 and the DNS name is server1.company.com.
I also run a network using only W2K machines but W2K machines (clients and servers) do need WINS when resolving NetBIOS names and this is what the Computer Browser service uses when it publishes its list.
If you really want to avoid using WINS (and even with this, you'll probably still need it to access some applications) you can publish shares in AD. To publish a share in Active Directory, within Active Directory Users and Computers, right click on the OU where you want to keep the network share and choose New > Shared Folder. Give the Shared Folder a name (usually the same as the share) and then type in the path to that share ie. \\Server\Sharename and click OK. If you want, you can then right click on this Shared Folder within the OU and click Properties. You can then set keywords so people can search Active Directory for shared folders using these keywords e.g. for the Sales and Marketing area, perhaps shared as S&M, you could add keywords "Sales" and "Marketing".
For clients to access this share, they go into My Network Place > Entire Network > Directory. They can either browse through the structure to the OU where you published the shared folder and double click on it (in this case, it's using DNS to locate the share as it's using Active Directory to find it) or they can right click on the domain here and click Find. Now, set the Find: box to Shared Folders and either type in the name of the share or type in a keyword to help them (e.g. in the above example, they could type either "sales" or "marketing" in as a keyword. This would locate the share they were after and when double clicking on it, take them to the correct place.
My recommendation is to set up a WINS server even if you do publish all your shares in Active Directory. Get your servers to register with it by putting your WINS server's IP address in the WINS properties of the IP settings of the server and change DHCP so that clients get this IP address for their WINS server. This should then sort all your problems.
Cheers, Antony
- Thread starter
- #9
Thanks Antony, I will check what I have done on that note. As I mentioned earlier have did set up WINS in the server a few weeks back and made it so the clients new where the WINS server was but still not browsing. I currently have my router set up as the DHCP server. When I set the server up as the DHCP server a few times but keep loosing the ability to get out to the Internet. That is a different issue I suppose. For all of this I should have all the NICS set to Enable NetBios over TCP/IP right? I hope. I have been trying so many things I don;t know where I am at any more. Thanks a lot for the help.
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