Computer still appears in workgroup after it's been turned off

15 Sep 2006 1:37 AM

PaulG

I have a 3-node network with two XP/SP2 machines and one XPPro
machine--call them A,B, and C. They are networked through a hard-wired
cable router and a couple of Gigabit switches.

Recently, I noticed that when I had all three machines networked and
then turned off Machine A, Machine A still showed up in the Microsoft
WIndows Network maps of Machines B and C. I rebooted Machine B and it
still showed the presence of (the turned off) Machine A. I don't think
either of these things used to happen on my network.

It's like something is causing machines to appear to "persist" on my
network after they're tuned off. Can anyone help me with this?

Machine C recently had one of its two hard drives changed out (Ghosted
to a larger version)., The changed drive did not have the O/S on it,
but the swap did cause drive letters on the (partitioned) new drive to
change, and I had to manually change them back. I then had trouble
with Machines A and B seeing C on the network (and with C seeing itself
on the network map!). I believe that changing the workgroup name on C
and then changing it back again and rebooting the router seems to have
cured this problem.

Thanks,
PaulG

15 Sep 2006 1:58 AM

Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]

In news:1158284256.677206.36970@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com,

PaulG <image-***@comcast.net> typed:
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> I have a 3-node network with two XP/SP2 machines and one XPPro
> machine--call them A,B, and C. They are networked through a
> hard-wired cable router and a couple of Gigabit switches.
>
> Recently, I noticed that when I had all three machines networked and
> then turned off Machine A, Machine A still showed up in the Microsoft
> WIndows Network maps of Machines B and C. I rebooted Machine B and it
> still showed the presence of (the turned off) Machine A. I don't
> think either of these things used to happen on my network.
>
> It's like something is causing machines to appear to "persist" on my
> network after they're tuned off. Can anyone help me with this?
>
> Machine C recently had one of its two hard drives changed out (Ghosted
> to a larger version)., The changed drive did not have the O/S on it,
> but the swap did cause drive letters on the (partitioned) new drive to
> change, and I had to manually change them back. I then had trouble
> with Machines A and B seeing C on the network (and with C seeing
> itself on the network map!). I believe that changing the workgroup
> name on C and then changing it back again and rebooting the router
> seems to have cured this problem.
>
> Thanks,
> PaulG

I believe this is entirely normal behavior - whichever computer is acting as
the master
browser and essentially holding the list of all names, still has the old
info and it will take a while to disappear (such as when you remove a
computer). Is this a
problem in general for you, outside of this one time issue? Rebooting all
the computers at once should have
made them all see each other again, if NetBIOS over TCP/IP was enabled on
all of them.

15 Sep 2006 1:20 PM

PaulG

Thanks, Lanwench--

You're right--rebooting all three machines seems to have brought the
network map back to normal. I'd just never seen this before (have run
this nwk for a couple of years). I'm surprised, since it makes it hard
to know what resources are actually available at any given time.

Is there any way to speed up the network's "recognition time" for
"departed" machines?

Thanks,
-PaulG

15 Sep 2006 1:51 PM

Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]

In news:1158326455.432538.60740@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com,

PaulG <image-***@comcast.net> typed:

> Thanks, Lanwench--
>
> You're right--rebooting all three machines seems to have brought the
> network map back to normal. I'd just never seen this before (have run
> this nwk for a couple of years). I'm surprised, since it makes it
> hard to know what resources are actually available at any given time.
>
> Is there any way to speed up the network's "recognition time" for
> "departed" machines?
>
> Thanks,
> -PaulG

I'm not sure, as I don't normally work with workgroups - and in domains, I
use WINS. What you're looking for is the computer browser service on each
computer. I suppose you could enable a scheduled task on each computer that
runs a batch file to stop & restart that service on a regular basis, if this
is a real concern to you, but I'm not sure I'd bother with three computers -
how often is this likely to be an issue? Remember, just because something
doesn't show up in the list doesn't mean it isn't on the network & can't be
accessed. And vice versa. Without a domain controller, internal DNS and
WINS, most network stuff is hard to centrally manage.