Unable to see Servers / PCs in Network Neighborhood

[superco7]

Just recently, I have been unable to see any network shares in network neighborhood. I am running a Windows 2003 Active Directory with a few 2000 and NT member servers and have DHCP and DNS enabled both running on the same server, all clients are Windows 2000 and Windows XP. I have checked to make sure that computer browser has been started and even tried to restart it, I have also checked to make sure that File and Print sharing is still enabled on all servers. The only change that has been made is that I created a new account for the DNS dynamic updates registration credentials on the DHCP server because I was getting errors in my event log. I also noticed that some of the icons in the DHCP Consol have a computer with a pen, which from what I read means that the "active lease, DNS dynamic update pending. This address is not available for lease by the DHCP server." DHCP was just installed 2 weeks ago with a lease duration of 21 days, prior to that I was using static IP addresses. I am trying to avoid reinstalling DHCP. Any help would be greatly appreciated...Thanks.

 

[ITPangaeaArchitect]

what options did you set in dhcp? numbe, anme, and setting (can be fake setting..just needs to get point across there)

-Brandon Wilson
MCSE00/03, MCSA:Messaging, MCSA03, A+
almost got a paragraph there

 

[superco7]

Thanks for the info and quick response Brandon, I was digging into it a little further and it ended up being that I no longer had a master browser enabled in my domain. I don’t know what would have caused this but once I changed the isdomainmaster key (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Browser\Parameters\isdomainmaster) to true on one of my domain controllers (that is running DNS but is not running DHCP) and restarted the computer browser service on that DC, everything started to show up again in the network neighborhood. It was an easy fix, once I determined what the problem was, but it was pretty coincidental because all of this started happening very soon after I installed DHCP. Again thanks for the help. If anyone knows what would cause that registry key to change, it would be very helpful in preventing it from happening again.

Thanks,

Mark