very weird domain/network problem

[OutHouse]

let see if i can explain this to where it makes any sense. I am at a complete loss on what is going on.

We have several different domains at my job. the main domain is used by users here in Boulder and users in Anderson Indiana. 2 days ago i opened network neighborhood and i only saw the PC's in Boulder. I called the Sys admin out in Indiana and had him open NN and all he saw were the PC's in Indiana. there is not a problem pinging, we can ping the machines by IP and by name. One of our domains is on a trust with our main domain. last night it lost its connectivity.

what is really weird is that it has fixed itself where we can see all the PC's in the main domain but it will screw up again.

I dont think it is a WINS issue. I have reapplied SP6 to our NT servers running WINS, I have rebooted the servers running WINS, I have deleted the WINS files and started WINS back up and the files were rebuilt but i still have this problem.

I am thinking it is either something on the Cabletron switch or on the firewall that is flaking out.

Have any of you seen any problem like this before? or can somebody give me someplace else to look to get this fixed?

 

[Garion]

If you can ping by IP, but not see in the network neighborhood, it pretty much HAS to be a WINS problem. Most likely something went bad in your replication beween WINS servers in the two sites.

One other question - Are you sure that your WINS is actually functioning? If you have a single subnet, it's possible that you could be seeing all the PC's at your site via their NetBIOS broadcasts, not via WINS. Check your WINS tables - Do they contain all the PCs on the network, on both sites?

- G

 

[Santa]

If you can not see the other domain's Netbios names (computers in network neighborhood) and you lost your trust between domains it is two very positive symptoms of WINS replication problem.

Try deleting your Push Pull partners and recreating them and seeing if the database gets cleaned up.

Were there any WAN changes, route changes, access list modifications ect? Has anyone been on the servers playing around with the WINS configurations?

These are questions you'll want to ask but I also agree with Garion on that the symptoms you are having are very much standard problems when WINS is not properly functioning.

 

[OutHouse]

I found something in event viewer/system on my BDC that is odd.

The browser was unable to retrieve a list of servers from the browser master \\GSWELL on the network \Device\NetBT_El90x1. The data is the error code.

I think that this NT workstation machine was trying to become the master browser. I hacked the registry so it would no longer try to become the browser.

so far it is working. I see all PC's in the domain in NN.