War of the Master Browser?!

[Pilot1]

I have two domain controllers at the hub site established. All was fine. I just added a third domain controller at another location (on another subnet). We use only one domain company wide. Now I cannot see any of the computers at the hub site (my local subnet) in Network Neighborhood, but I can see the computers on the other subnet. Now I get this message in the event viewer on the hour (Domain Master): The master browser has received a server announcement from the computer IOWA that believes that it is the master browser for the domain on transport NetBT_Tcpip_{16B9F088-4AF5-45EB-8949. The master browser is stopping or an election is being forced. The host Iowa is the third server on another subnet. This is the subnet that I can see the computers on, but not my local subnet. Any ideas?

Pilot1

 

[Meldric]

Disable the master browser on the remote server. That should solve your problem.

Roger

 

[jahlmer]

Or, at least make sure netbeui is not installed, and if it's 9x clients instead set up wins and wins clients (remember to make the wins server a client of itself). Under file and printer sharing properties, disable master browser, and perhaps enable lmanounce (don't know, try it).

Good luck

 

[yizhar]

HI!

I also agree that configuring WINS on all servers and clients may solve the problem.

Also verify that the routers between sites do not forward broadcast traffic.
(The routers should NOT be configured as bridges).

Bye

Yizhar Hurwitz

http://come.to/yizhar

http://teachers.sivan.co.il/yizhar

 

[Pilot1]

First of all thanks to all who responded! By removing Netbeui from Windows 2000 Professional machines, all computers show now. I also solved another annoying problem I was having with Front Page 2002 by ridding my machine of Netbuei, IIS would close the connection during a publish without finishing. Now on to problem, I do have Wins configured, and all workstations are automatically assigned Wins and DNS Server ip's via my single DHCP server. Here's the next question: I was under the impression that Win9x clients needed netbeui to allow access to, and function with the network browser. I removed netbeui from a Win 98 workstation. I cannot browse Network Neighborhood, but I can search for and locate any machine on the network. Shouldn't I be able to browse using strictly tcp/ip on a win98 client? I know that Win 98 is capable of Netbios over tcp/ip. BTW, I also stopped the browser service on the Win2000 server that kept trying to be the Master Browser, and that seemed to solve the event entry about an election being forced. Now I notice that some Win 98 machines are claiming they are the master browsers! Whats up with this. I notice that any given win 98 machine will be the culprit on any of our four subnets? What gives here?

Pilot1

 

[g7fce]

Hi all,

I must first state that I am not MCSE, and my knowledge is based on personal experiance, and reading of books, so I do not consider myself an expert by means.

I am an IT support Engineer, and on occasion have a similar problem in at the company I work for. We have multiple domains and workgroups and many sites connected by WAN, however the problem is restricted to one workgroup on one domain.

The problem we have is that one workgroup becomes un-browsable from any machine be it Win2K, NT Win95 or Win98. On investigation using BrowMon and BrowStat I found that the roles of Master and Backup Browsers for that workgroup had been taken on by clients in that workgroup. I also noticed after locating these machines, that they had envitably become unresponsive, and hence I believe this to be the cause of the browsing problem for that workgroup. (I should point out that all other workgroups & Domains can still be browsed by all clients).

Now I am no expert in thses matters, but what I have found is that this workgoup has no high ranking machines, most if not all are Win95/98 clients, so the only definition between them being the spec of the machine which I also believe is taken into account when elections occur, and hence they occur quite often as new machines log on and off the network.

My suggestion to my "Technical Support Team!?" was to install at least one or two high ranking Windows 2000 machines, preferably a server, but at least a high spec Win2k Prof machine, in the hope that it would be elected as the master browser for that segment of the network.

This has not been tried yet so I can not tell you if this solution might work, but this seems a logical approach to me, and I would welcome your comments, ideas as this may also apply to "PILOT1's" problem.

Oh yes also as with "PILOT1" even when unable to browse the problem work group, Shares can be accessed by connection to a machine using UNC path name.

Regards

Mike Warren