Unable to view network shares

[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 am able to ping by IP address and name. I am also able to map drives, and use UNC paths to get to the shares, they are just not visible. 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

 

[markdmac]

Make sure client and servers are configured for using NetBIOS over TCP/IP.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

 

[one4utwoc]

you could also try installing IPX/SPX....I have found in the past that remidies that problem aswell

 

[porkchopexpress]

Are you sure installing IPX will help in a non Netware environment?

 

[superco7]

Thanks for the response everyone. Sorry for not posting this earlier, but I was able to resolve this issue. 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