Windows 2003 server not seen by clients

[Jorge Pinto Leite]

Hi all

Hope someone can help me. One of my customers has a small domain network, the domain controller beeing a 2003 Server and the clients have W2K Pro and XP Pro. All boxes with all updates installed.
All IP's are dynamic - with the exception of 2003, who has an IP of 192.168.0.1.
All clients log easily into the domain, capturing an IP, default gateway (the DC) and so on. For internet access, the DC forward the request to the real gateway.
Everything was working fine, but suddendly all clients stopped seeing the DC in My network places, and the DC stopped also to see the clients. Nevertheless, the clients can access the DC shared resources if they use the Start - Run - \\dcname.
All access are equal as they used to be, with only this issue.
I've tried to look into the firewall configuration of the DC, but it returns an error message saying that the DC is using IPNAT so I can't look into that.
The DC is also acting as the DNS server for all clients.
Can someone help me?

Thanks in advance.
Jorge

[Volker Spies]

Hello Jorge,

you said you installed all updates.
Did you install Sp for Windows 2003, i remember a problem with ipnat.sys is fixed with sp1.

Is there anythin in the eventlog of the server?

Did you use wins? Seems that network browsing does not function. Try to install wins, configure the DHCP with the wins server adress and try again.

Is there an error message if you try to browse the network from "my network places"?

Regards

Volker

[Ivan Ferreira]

It seems that you are not using Wins, and you are having a master browser problem. Configure the Wins services, ensure that the computer browser service is started. Verify that netbios is enabled.

[Jon Finley]

FYI - If you've enabled routing, that will block you from getting access to the firewall interface.

Jon

[Thomas Bianco]

as mentioned, browsing is remarkably unstable, and WINS is a centralized database designed to correct these issues. consider enabling WINS on the DC, and placing it's ip address in the DHCP options.

since all your clients are 2000 or better, you could go with DNS as your name resolution method. DNS is conceptually simpler, but slightly more complex to set up. since you already have a 2003 domain, all you would need to do is enable dynamic updates on the domain controller, add the DNS server to the DHCP options and set the options for client DDNS updates.

keep us posted.

[Jorge Pinto Leite]

Dear all

Thank you very much for your answers.
Volker: yes, all SP and updates were installed in 2003 as well as in all clients. There is absolutely nothing in eventlog, and there was no error when browsing the lan.

Ivan: yes, I was using WINS. In fact, first of all I wasn't using it, but I tried to use it just to be sure what was happening.

What happened today, well, I can I put it, the server started appearing again in local network! Why? I'm not sure. I'm going to invastigate the updates applied during the week, and try to learn something on it...

Jorge

[Jorge Pinto Leite]

It's working! Microsoft will now why...