Invisible Computers in My Network Places [Update: Problem gone]

[sandmanwake]

I had a similar problem while I was living on campus. In fact, everyone I knew had this problem. One person would be able to see some computers and another person would see a different set of computers. Everyone was connected to the same network though, and being in the same group didn't matter.

What I found worked though was that though we couldn't see every computer on network neighborhood, we could still connect to them by typing in their ip's on Internet Explorer; Netscape won't work.

//xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx or was that \\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

It has to be typed in one of the two forms above, I think it's the second one.

 

[spidey07]

Alright AC, looks like you have discovered why MS peer networks sucks donkeys.

I'll try to help though.

I'm going to make some assumptions and then explain MS networking.

1) You can ping by ip address, this means layers 1,2,3 are good.
2) All machines are on the same broadcast domain (no router or filtering between them, on SAME IP SUBNET)
3) None of the other computers have any other network adapters (even dial-up)
4) You don't have any WINS servers running
5) All machines have the same WORKGROUP name
6) All computer names (netbios names) are no longer than 14 characters and do not contain special charaters other the alphanumberic, -, _ and space (for god's sake don't put spaces in a computer name people)

With those assumptions in place your MS network will be operating in a broadcast mode and should be fine. PCs will locate Netbios over TCP (NBT) names with a subnet broadcast/layer 2 broadcast. Windows DOES cache netbios names, check to see if your name resolution is working by going to command prompt and typing "net view \\NETBIOSNAME" where NETBIOSNAME is the computer name. If you get a list of shares on the computer then great! name resolution/browsing is working. If not then we have to look at other things. On DOS prompt type "nbtstat -c" and see if you have any netbiosname/ip address pairings.

Name Type Host Address Life [sec
----------------------------------------------------------
BF_BDC_1 <20> UNIQUE 172.21.1.189 660
BF_PDC_1 <20> UNIQUE 172.21.1.190 660

If not then somehow you cannot resolve NBT names and will never work.

If you can ping that means your hosts routing table/arp tables are fine.

You can edit a file called LMHOSTS in the windows directory to manually map the NBTnames to IP addresses.

Maybe the subnet master browser is screwed up (the dipsh!t down the hall likes to play with registry settings does he? or maybe a soft firewall on his machine?). This computer is arbitrailiy decided (simple explanation)



Other than checking nbtstat -c to see if names are resolving and pings work I can't be much more help without a packet trace. If you are able to get a capure then e-mail to me and I can help.

cheers!

ps - MS networking by default (maybe design?) does exactly what you described from time to time. The browse list will just up and get screwed. Best to use a WINS server, still a browse list but at least comes from a reliable source.

 

[AC]

Wow, thanks for all that info/help.

Your assumptions are all correct.

The &quot;nbtstat&quot; commands didn't yield anything, so something's screwed up with the NBT name/ip resolving. I'll need to figure out why this is and fix it. My friends' computers don't have this problem. Their computers can even see mine, but their attempts to establish a connection with mine always time out.

 

[AC]

Strange thing happened about 10 min ago. I rebooted my PC and NetBIOS resolution was working. I don't have a clue why. Anyways, I'm glad this problem disappeared. I just wanted to thank everyone for helping. If this problem comes up in the future, you'll probably hear about it again.