Re: Windows XP Clients WINS registrations

From: Ageing Brilliantine Stick Insect (AgeingBrilliantineStickInsect_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 01/12/05 

Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 14:43:05 -0800

Hi Honez,

We are using DHCP. As I said, the reason I can't find the users in WINS is
because the XP clients have the messenger service turned off. The PCs are all
listed OK there.

That nbtstat thing works a treat. I think I will stick a big sticker on each
PC with the serial number on it...that should help.

Our users are just Domain Users - ABSOLUTELY NO ADMIN RIGHTS!! I am aware of
the bad karma making our dummies (sorry, users) administrators would bring
down on our network!

I normally edit a PCs description field in the ADUC and add the user name,
but I am not the only one who puts PCs on the network, and I don't always
remember to do it myself. We also seem to re-assign PCs on a regular basis,
so this makes my method somewhat unreliable.

I think the idea of a spread*** is probably the best idea. It's just one
of those things that I never seem to have time to do.

And finally, yes, I am the sysadmin here. I actually have my MCP
qualification (I've done the Win2K and Win2K Server exams), but I fear I
ain't a very good MCP, so I just leave that out when I do posts to these
newsgroups. It's probably bad enough when people read my posts and think
'What a twit'......if they saw that I was an MCP as well they would probably
think I was an even greater twit!

Gerry

PS By way of explanation, 'twit' is not a misspelling (ie I didn't hit 'i'
instead of 'a'!!) - twit is a word we use in Australia to describe morons
like myself!

"honez" wrote:

> Some other things, are your client computers getting thier IP address from a
> DHCP Server or are they assigned statically? If they are being assigned
> dynamically, then you would want to use "NETBIOS Setting From the DHCP
> Server", thus, you could do an 'nbtstat -a' on the computer name, and that
> would give you the ip address of the computer name along with the MAC
> Address and who is logged on. See what nbtstat -a gives you as you are set
> up now.
>
> In your example, is "ratesclerk" the name of the computer or a user name??
> because you can always do this: \\computername\share and then give
> permissions to the user or group thas access that share. or create a group
> with the users and give the group whatever permissions on the share. It
> sound to me like you have assigned IP addresses statically, I dont know the
> logistics of changing all your machines to DHCP and setting up a dhcp
> server, but for the special cases you can have statics in a dhcp
> environment.
>
> what type of rights do your users have on your network? Domain Users should
> be all they get unless a program someone uses requires root privledges,
> otherwise, if they dont need the Domain Admin or Local machine Administrator
> rights, they could wreak havoc on the network by changing the names,
> downloading spyware or whatever else creeps over the Net wire...
> Are you the Sys Admin at this company? If it were me, I would go around to
> each and every computer and get the name and IP and keep it on an Excel
> Spreadsheel for reference along with the mac and location of the machine and
> who the primary user is. I know that may take time but in the long run it
> will make it easier.
> How is your network set up, this can help me understand your issue.
> Porgrams i use for administering are "Dameware" and Hyena v6.2. not to
> mention the older tools form NT, User manager and Server Manager.
>
> Keep me posted, no pun intended... Cheers!
>
>
> "Ageing Brilliantine Stick Insect"
> <AgeingBrilliantineStickInsect@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:4085FF14-F498-43BF-9520-8DFE4FEEC2A9@microsoft.com...
> > Thanks for that, honez........
> >
> > I am starting to think the problem may be me..my understanding of WINS and
> > all those other bits is probably not as good as it could be.
> >
> > I should just give a bit of background. It is the custom where I work to
> > make computer names the serial number of the computer. Why this is I don't
> > know, it just is, but it makes some things difficult - ie if the Rates
> Clerk
> > rings with computer problems, rather than just opening up a connection to
> > \\ratesclerk\c$ (for example) I have to go into the wins console, look up
> the
> > username of the user signed onto the Rates Clerk's computer, get the IP
> > address and then connect to the PC that way. Now that we have gone to XP
> on
> > some PCs it seems that the PCs are registering in the WINS database, but
> the
> > usernames are not.
> >
> > Of course this would all be irrelevant if someone could tell me an easy
> way
> > to work out a user's IP address from their username. I run a utility
> called
> > 'User Finder' each morning which checks the network for all logged on
> users
> > and records their IP addresses, but this takes about 15 - 20 minutes to
> scan
> > the network.
> >
> > Our user base is pretty uneducated, so getting them to open a command
> prompt
> > and type ipconfig and read off their IP address is way above 99.9% of our
> > users.......there must be an easier way.......I just don't know what it
> is.
> >
> > "honez" wrote:
> >
> > > are you able to connect by IP? Not netbios name? did you check the
> > > "Netbios over TCP/IP" in the network WINS properties? I have
> experienced
> > > connection issues between 2K and XP and had to set it all up on the
> local
> > > machine as Administrator, then configure as necessary for normal domain
> user
> > > accounts, ie, printing between XP and 2K has its issues, again, in my
> > > experience.
> > > "Ageing Brilliantine Stick Insect"
> > > <AgeingBrilliantineStickInsect@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
> message
> > > news:96D9A47E-99E2-46A6-B645-57A5878FA30D@microsoft.com...
> > > > We have recently started changing over from Windows 2000 to Windows
> XP.
> > > Our
> > > > servers are all still Windows 2000, but our Windows XP workstations
> are
> > > not
> > > > registering themselves in the WINS database. All network settings seem
> to
> > > be
> > > > correct (the XP boxes seem to function correctly when attached to our
> > > > network), but there must be something I have forgotten to set
> somewhere.
> > > Can
> > > > anyone point me in the right direction?
> > >
> > >
> > >
>
>
>