Computer Browser Service Mysteriously Shut Down

[toadeater]

Does anyone have any idea why the Computer Browser service in XP would shut itself down even though it was set to Automatic? The mysterious part is this happened on 9 PCs on the network and remained that way until I manually started it on each PC. Now it's running again.

There are no firewalls running on the PCs, and after clicking start, the browser service ran without errors.

 

[RebateMonger]

Computer Browser issues have often been caused by the recent (past few months) Windows Update bugs. Make sure that all the PCs have the very latest Windows Updates installed, since the very latest updates fix this problem. Normally, though, when you have the "Windows Update Blues", you can't manually start the Computer Browser Service, either.

 

[toadeater]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Computer Browser issues have often been caused by the recent (past few months) Windows Update bugs. Make sure that all the PCs have the very latest Windows Updates installed, since the very latest updates fix this problem. Normally, though, when you have the "Windows Update Blues", you can't manually start the Computer Browser Service, either.

After some searching, I think it is because I shut down the Windows Firewall and ICS services. There seems to be a known bug with this in XP SP2 and I found a fixed browser.dll that MS is supposed to include in SP3. Not sure if this fix is included in Windows Update yet.
You can call MS tech support and ask for it, or download it from here:

http://tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1093184&page=1

 

[nweaver]

I would advise against installing 3rd party system DLL files, it's just to risky.