Forcing win2k to be a master browser using tcp/ip

[The PIT]

Title says it all. How do you force win2k to be a Master browser using tcp/ip.

[LvR]

Hey - you stole my damn question!

Just started getting a Mrxsmb in the system logs complaining that one of the machines on my network has decided to take over the damn world.

Last time I sorted it by killing the network connection on the machine that tried to take over the world, setting up network TCP/IP again and enabling Netbios over TCP/IP on that machine.

[The PIT]

Well this is a little background. A group of machines I don't whether there in a Domain or workgroup the admin hasn't told me yet suddenly started loosing machines from there Network neighbourhood. Fairly normal behaviour if the master browser gets switched off. All the machines won't re-appear until the new master browser builds up a list and if that gets turned off the process starts all over again.
Now the admin of the machines has noticed that the machines only with tcp/ip installed disappear the ones with ipx installed remain in the network neighbourhood. Also when he checked for Master browsers there wasn't any on the network!!!!!!

[HomeBrewer]

This portion extracted from Microsoft Knowledge Base article 136712; May be of some assistance:

Under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE subtree, look under the following subkeys for some common registry settings that relate to browsing:



\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Browser\Paramet ers\IsDomainMaster

IsDomainMaster parameter information:
When set to 1, this parameter provides a priority boost to increase its likely hood of winning a master browser election. It does not allow the browse server to become the domain master browser. This value is a boolean value and can be any of the following: Yes/No, True/False, or 1/0.

MaintainServerList:
When set to NO, the server is not a browse server.
When set to YES, the server becomes a browse server.
When set to AUTO, the server becomes a browse master if the master browser asks it do so.


My thinking is to set the machine you want to 1 and YES and all others to 0 and NO

Good luck!

[The PIT]

Now if the University bothered to send me on a proper training course I would know how to debug these without hunting up a book.
The only thing they sent me is Admin course concerned with setting up users. Totally useless for what I need.

[Kooldino]

Nice find, HomeBrewer.

Pit-I've noticed the problem you speak of for several versions of Windows now. I was wondering how it all worked.

[The PIT]

The only thing I wonder is when a new Master comes on the network and takes over does the old list get thrown away rather than passed on. Knowing Microshaft it probably does.

[LvR]

Homebrewer

Cheers for sharing your magic - it certainly solved my hassles and the log is no longer plagued by Mrxsmb entries.

[The PIT]

I sent them another link before Homebrewer posted which gave the same info. It seems to have cured there problem but they're giving it a few days to see.
I wonder if they configured all there machines not to be a master browser as there should have been one.

[HomeBrewer]

Glad that I could be of assistance!

[The PIT]

Ah more info has come through. It's running a mixture of Linux and win9x/2k machines. Basically Linux wasn't setup properly and fubared the rest of the system. They've now corrected the problem and everything seems fine.