Windows Server 2k3 troubles

August 5, 2005 8:07 AM

Windows Server 2003 Problems!

I'm running a network of about 50 computers, I have four servers, one of which is a Windows 2k Server, and 3 of them are Windows 2k3. One of the 2k3 servers is setup as a WINS server, and it refuses to become the master browser if there is any kind of power outage and the network restarts. Even if I force an election it refuses. Short of rebooting everything, what can I do?

posted by jackofsaxons to Technology (4 answers total)

Not sure if this will work on 2003 (I've never tried), but there's an old registry hack for this. Here's a good Microsoft KB article on browser operation. It might have some information that will help. One thing to mention, the PDC is always the master browser. If this particular server is not the PDC (the server with WINS) that may be your problem.
posted by purephase at 8:20 AM on August 5, 2005

Response by poster: Yeah, the 2k3 server running WINS is the master browser, well.. at least it's trying to be. I set the registry entry to make it maintain the server list and to be the master browser, but that hasn't done any good.
posted by jackofsaxons at 8:24 AM on August 5, 2005

if you havent tried this yet, check out the dcdiag and netdiag support tools. they have helped me out immensely in troubleshooting problems like this.
posted by yeahyeahyeahwhoo at 10:37 AM on August 5, 2005

Unix hosts running Samba can cause some problems with browse master elections; specifically, it's often configured to always win. The fix varies from distribution to distribution, but here's a good walkthrough of how to fix it.
posted by idlemind at 11:15 AM on August 5, 2005