NT networking problem thats been bugging me for years

[Admiral LSD 0]

OK, before anyone asks the reason I'm only asking for help on this now is that it's only recently started to become a serious problem as opposed to just a general annoyance.

 

Anyway, when a 9x box accesses shares on another 9x box the handshaking/authentication/whatever happens almost instantaneously, the same may occur between two NT boxes although as the owner of the only NT box in the house I've never really been able to test that. Now, when my NT box tries to access shares on either my brothers or my folks 98 machines (first and second editions respectively) it takes forever to authenticate and general browsing is as slow as balls (assuming it doesn't hang the explorer window entirely -- which was the problem I was talking about earlier). Is there anyway around this, some misconfiguration on my part?

[DosFreak 2]

NT4? 2000? or XP?

 

If 2000 or XP there's a reg tweak but I think your probably referring to NT4.

[clutch 1]

The reg tweak should apply to all of them (if you are referring to the one disabling the scan for printers and such), but the issue basically revolves around not having a WINS box on your network. When you have one (especially with DHCP, then you have one *very* happy NT network) all the boxes "check-in" at boot up and report who they are, and what resources they have available. At that point, the WINS box hangs on to that info, and when a client makes a request (through the notorious Network Neighborhood) it checks to see if it has looked for it before, then if not goes to a WINS box, then the LMHOSTS file, then broadcast mode. Once it has gone through all of that and *finally* finds all the clients, it will then ask for everything that's available (shares, services, etc) from these boxes and effectively what rank they are in the network. So, if you have a WINS box, this isn't an issue as it is higher up in the resolution order *and* has all the info it is looking for to begin with. Easy right? In any case, I don't have the reg key available at the moment, but if someone doesn't give it to you by Monday I can post it (I keep it in my reg key collection at the office ).

[Admiral LSD 0]

hmmm... In that case, I wonder what would happen if I were to enable Sambas WINS support. I might try that.

 

Quote:

NT4? 2000? or XP?

 

If 2000 or XP there's a reg tweak but I think your probably referring to NT4.

 

It's happened in every version of NT I've ever used fron NT4 Server right up until XP Pro.

[Klark 0]

You've been working in Linux/Samba and NT4 Server, and you don't even understand the basics of WINS?? Dude!

 

Do exactly as Clutch said, set up a WINS server on your network. If you're already running an NT4 machine, there is NO reason why you shouldn't.....Ecspecially considering it takes about 5 minutes to install the service and configure it.

[uboofer 0]

I agree with Clutch.

 

NT and the win9x OS's are netbios based. WINS even though not necessarily needed is important part for these OS's to communicate with each other. NT and WIN9x can use DNS for communication but depending on what DHCP tells the computer for node type, it will wait for a response from other services or host files before getting to DNS.

 

The bad part about WINS is that it is a resource hog compared to other services. Thank MS for going away from it for WIN2k and future OS's.

[Admiral LSD 0]

Quote:

You've been working in Linux/Samba and NT4 Server, and you don't even understand the basics of WINS?? Dude!

Do exactly as Clutch said, set up a WINS server on your network. If you're already running an NT4 machine, there is NO reason why you shouldn't.....Ecspecially considering it takes about 5 minutes to install the service and configure it.

Thing is, I don't do this sort of stuff for a living and therefore have no real need to know more than how to get things running the way I want them. Until now, this hasn't really been all that big a deal an so I've never been bothered doing any real research in how to fix it.

Now, I have WINS support enabled in Samba (wins support = yes and name resolve order = wins lmhosts bcast, the defaults in both cases) but still nothing seems to have changed. Where should I go from here?

Another thing, I haven't run NT4 in any capacity for about 3 years. I gave up on it as soon as a copy of Win2000 came my way.

[colinkhalid 0]

Just to add my input, I am running XP prof and have just the same problem as in the first post. I would really like to know how to resolve this.

[uboofer 0]

Do you connect to Win9x machines? If so like stated earlier they will need Wins to speed up the communication speed. Win XP and Win2k are based more towards DNS but will still use Wins to a certain extent.

[colinkhalid 0]

yes I connect to win98

 

what should I enter in the WINS server search order

 

the ip system on my LAN is :-

 

XP box 1 192.168.1.1

Win98 1 box 192.168.1.2

Win98 2 box 192.168.1.3

WinME box 192.168.1.4

Win98 box 192.168.1.5 this has the printers,cable modem and Winroute

XP box 2 192.168.1.6

 

 

all fixed ip, DCHP on winroute is off

 

Thanks

[uboofer 0]

Not familiar with winroute. Maybe someone else can help you there on theat one. WINS and DNS are services that are found in servers such as windows NT server and all of the w2k server family. I dont know what services are found in Linux but you may want to ask someone on that one.

[clutch 1]

Samba for Linux does have the ability to shadow the behavior on a network of a WINS (Windows Internet Name Service for those who didn't know, this is the MS service that maps NetBIOS names like PC1 and PC2 to their respective IPs) box, but all the clients still have to be pointed to it in their network properties to register their names and addresses. WINS is like DNS in name resolution, and but is quite simple to install (but only available on NT-based Server OSs), so if this option is available it would be the proper way to go. If the addresses are static, you could map them manually using the LMHOSTS file in %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc, and them *removing* the .SAM extension from the file.

 

Using Terminal Server, I dug up the keys. These will remove the scans for "Scheduled Tasks" when a client is connecting to another client:

 

For NT4 and higher:

REGEDIT4

 

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RemoteComputer\NameSpace\{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}]

@="Scheduled Tasks"

 

OK, for those that haven't made reg keys before, simple make a new text file, copy and paste all of the bold text above to it, and then save the file with a .REG extension (making sure not to retain the .TXT extension). You can then either double click on the file or right click on it and select "Merge". Give that a shot and see if that helps.

[Admiral LSD 0]

Like I said earlier, I have WINS enabled in Samba and lmhosts files defined on each of the four machines on the network and it still takes forever to browse shares from my WinXP box. Is there something I'm missing here (like correct client side configration? I have the WINS server defined as the same IP as the Samba server)?

[clutch 1]

I had only used Samba in Linux for a little while, and even then it was 2.0.5 (so it was a while ago. I would just go with the reg key trick and try using the LMHOSTS file if you have static IPs. If you have an NT/2K Server on your network, simply install the WINS service and have the hosting server point to itself as a WINS server, and all the clients point to it as well. If not, use the aforementioned tricks.

[Admiral LSD 0]

Just out of curiosity how powerful does a WINS server generally have to be? The Linux/Samba box in question is a 486DX4/100 (hold back the guffaws for a moment, it makes a bloody great internet router if nothing else), could that be whats holding me back?

 

If it is then I'll definitely go the reg key route. The reg key only has to be applied to my XP box and not the two 98 boxes, right?

[clutch 1]

Well, first your Linux box is emulating the WINS service, and there *might* be some reason as to why it isn't resolving your clients properly (in NT there really isn't anything to configure in a small network unless you have static mappings). Besides, NT Server ran fine on the same box you are describing (provided it has 32MB of RAM or more, I never did care for anything less than that in NT).

 

As for the reg key, that is correct. Just the NT-based boxes are affected by this scan issue, so you shouldn't need to adjust any keys in Win9x.

[CUViper 0]

Quote:

The reg key only has to be applied to my XP box and not the two 98 boxes, right?

Correct... all the reg key does is prevent XP from looking for the "Scheduled Tasks" entry in the shares of the 98 boxes. The long initial delay is caused by looking for this share that does not exist in 98.

[uboofer 0]

If your network is small your wins server does not have to be to powerful but in large networks with lots of netbios based computers (win9x and winnt) it could really get hit hard with registration requests and network inquireries.

 

The thing with WINS is that it is a dynamic service so it will make changes to the database very often. Up until Windows 2000 came out DNS was static and did not change a great deal. Now with W2k DNS can be set to be dynamic also and it can take a hit also but I think that it is a little more effecient than WINS.

[clutch 1]

Quote:

Up until Windows 2000 came out DNS was static and did not change a great deal. Now with W2k DNS can be set to be dynamic also and it can take a hit also but I think that it is a little more effecient than WINS.

You could (and still can if you don't have dynamic updates enabled) use reverse lookups from the DNS service to WINS in order to resolve computers on a network that are not static. So, it would behave like a dynamic DNS service, but with little complication to it.

[uboofer 0]

I did forget about the reverse lookups, Clutch.