Workgroup problem

[pagjsp]

I have 45+ workstations here at the office, most of which are Windows 2000 fully patched, and about (5) of which are Windows 98 holdovers from the old days. All of a sudden, none of the Win 2000 machines can see any of the Win 98 pc's in Network Neighborhood. I can ping them, search and find them, and it's not that big a deal, except that my Sophos console can't see them to verify updated anti-virus settings if I can't see them otherwise. I'm suspecting either a recent Win 2K patch screwed this up, and possibly a malfunctioning nic in one of the workstations, but don't see any extra traffic on the main switch. Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[CharlieJax]

Try adding netbios to the Windows 2000 machines, a recent patch might have removed the netbios communication that allows you to talk to the pre 2K machines. A shorter version might be just to check that using NETBios over TCP/IP is still active.

You could also try uninstalling recent patches on one W2K machine and see which one is causing the issue.

CJ

Don't drink and post, save that for driving home!

 

[pagjsp]

Thanks, I guess it's down to the nitty-gritty troubleshooting steps then.

 

[swayser]

There is no nitty gritty. The Windows 4.1 machines use the NetBIOS protocol to transmit its name to other machines. NetBIOS isn't installed by default on the Windows 5.0 machines so they can't see the computer names. To solve your problem install the NetBIOS protocol on your Windows 5.0 units and evrything will be a GO.

 

[pagjsp]

Problem is, apparently NetBios (Nwlink Netbios) is installed as part of the Novell client, so that's how the p2p was communicating all along. Since my last post a couple of Win 98 pc's have shown up, but some haven't. I'm considering putting them in their own workgroup for troubleshooting purposes, but have been busy otherwise.I'll try removing selected patches from a test Win 2K machine first and see what happens. Thanks for the reply.