Frustrating Network Abnormality

I have a mixed network in my house. Number of Win 7 pcs, some laptops
connecting wirelessly and a couple of Xbox's via cable also connected.
There's also a couple of older XP pcs still used as video/audio servers
to various tvs in the house and an IP camera. Except laptops all are
connected via wire, laptops wired usually but sometimes wireless is used
instead.

Issue is one of my Win 7 pcs. When it's running as Browser Master none
of the XP pcs can browse the network, IP addresses work and shortcuts to
shares all work but trying to explore will not! Only the one Win 7 pc
does this and for the life of me I can't figure out why as other than
video card it's almost identical to another which doesn't exibit issue.
I'm forced to reboot the "bad" pc so another pc becomes Master Browser
and then all well.

Anyone with any ideas?

Also, there seems to be registry settings to force a pc to become master
browser but is there on to tell it not to become one instead?

pjp wrote:


I have a mixed network in my house. Number of Win 7 pcs, some laptops
connecting wirelessly and a couple of Xbox's via cable also
connected. There's also a couple of older XP pcs still used as
video/audio servers to various tvs in the house and an IP camera.
Except laptops all are connected via wire, laptops wired usually but
sometimes wireless is used instead.

Issue is one of my Win 7 pcs. When it's running as Browser Master
none of the XP pcs can browse the network, IP addresses work and
shortcuts to shares all work but trying to explore will not! Only the
one Win 7 pc does this and for the life of me I can't figure out why
as other than video card it's almost identical to another which
doesn't exibit issue. I'm forced to reboot the "bad" pc so another
pc becomes Master Browser and then all well.

Anyone with any ideas?

Also, there seems to be registry settings to force a pc to become
master browser but is there on to tell it not to become one instead?

PJP,

Run regedit.exe and do the following:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Browser\Parameters

Create a string "IsDomainMaster"and set it to FALSE.

Reboot.

Should be all set.

JT

--

In article , lid says...

pjp wrote:


I have a mixed network in my house. Number of Win 7 pcs, some laptops
connecting wirelessly and a couple of Xbox's via cable also
connected. There's also a couple of older XP pcs still used as
video/audio servers to various tvs in the house and an IP camera.
Except laptops all are connected via wire, laptops wired usually but
sometimes wireless is used instead.

Issue is one of my Win 7 pcs. When it's running as Browser Master
none of the XP pcs can browse the network, IP addresses work and
shortcuts to shares all work but trying to explore will not! Only the
one Win 7 pc does this and for the life of me I can't figure out why
as other than video card it's almost identical to another which
doesn't exibit issue. I'm forced to reboot the "bad" pc so another
pc becomes Master Browser and then all well.

Anyone with any ideas?

Also, there seems to be registry settings to force a pc to become
master browser but is there on to tell it not to become one instead?

PJP,

Run regedit.exe and do the following:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Browser\Parameters

Create a string "IsDomainMaster"and set it to FALSE.

Reboot.

Should be all set.

JT

Thanks I'll give that a try. I have tried instead to set one of the
other win7 pcs to 'IsDomainMaster = True' but that didn't seem to
work???

What's curious to me is how the election is carried out, e.g. what
parameters are used to determine Master Browser. If I have all PCs on
but router off and then turn router on the pc ends up being Master
browser is always this problem pc. It's not the fastest (Dual Core
versus some I5's) nor has the greatest capacity( mid size hard disk
compared to way more on I5's). Same with video, e.g. it's all a little
less than other pcs on network. So I again ask - how is who gets elected
determined???

pjp wrote:
In article , lid says...
pjp wrote:

I have a mixed network in my house. Number of Win 7 pcs, some laptops
connecting wirelessly and a couple of Xbox's via cable also
connected. There's also a couple of older XP pcs still used as
video/audio servers to various tvs in the house and an IP camera.
Except laptops all are connected via wire, laptops wired usually but
sometimes wireless is used instead.

Issue is one of my Win 7 pcs. When it's running as Browser Master
none of the XP pcs can browse the network, IP addresses work and
shortcuts to shares all work but trying to explore will not! Only the
one Win 7 pc does this and for the life of me I can't figure out why
as other than video card it's almost identical to another which
doesn't exibit issue. I'm forced to reboot the "bad" pc so another
pc becomes Master Browser and then all well.

Anyone with any ideas?

Also, there seems to be registry settings to force a pc to become
master browser but is there on to tell it not to become one instead?
PJP,

Run regedit.exe and do the following:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Browser\Parameters

Create a string "IsDomainMaster"and set it to FALSE.

Reboot.

Should be all set.

JT

Thanks I'll give that a try. I have tried instead to set one of the
other win7 pcs to 'IsDomainMaster = True' but that didn't seem to
work???

What's curious to me is how the election is carried out, e.g. what
parameters are used to determine Master Browser. If I have all PCs on
but router off and then turn router on the pc ends up being Master
browser is always this problem pc. It's not the fastest (Dual Core
versus some I5's) nor has the greatest capacity( mid size hard disk
compared to way more on I5's). Same with video, e.g. it's all a little
less than other pcs on network. So I again ask - how is who gets elected
determined???

The purpose of the browser election, is to make sure
only one machine is Master Browser. It doesn't really
matter who wins, as long as there is only one winner.

And if the Master Browser shuts down, the election
intervals are there to ensure a new Master is elected.

Various max time constants for resolution are documented here.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...rowser-service

Paul