I'm sorry about this if it's stupid, or a FAQ ... my NT sysadmin expertise is close to 'nil'.... I've spent time at Technet and Google and not made any real progress on it....

Is there a limit to the number of XP Pro machines that can "see" each other in "My Network Places" in a peer/workgroup setting?

I've got 10 boxen on a LAN, and it seems that only five (let's say \machine1, \machine2... \machine5) will appear on the list at any given time. However, if I type \machine8 in a browser window, its resources show up there....

Is there some SW toggle that causes this behavior? Or have I just misconfigged something? My NT sysadmin brother (poor guy) finally took a week off and went to New Orleans, so I can't bug him about this today ... 🙁

If anyone has experience with this, I'd appreciate a brief word of insight .... 🙂

    I've got 8 XP machines, 1 98 and 1 win2k server on my network and i can see all of them. Are you sure you're lokoing at the "entire network"

      Yeah, pretty sure. All of the boxes have the same workgroup name. If I choose the "entire workgroup" icon (that's the name, isn't it ... sitting here on 'Nix right now...I know you go through a few clicks, a world, a LAN looking thing, etc....) still can only see about 5 of them.

      I wondered if name resolution was an issue, but like I said, it can find \machine8 ... it just doesn't show up on the big list....

      Even in the cmd shell ...

      C:\blah>net view
\\machine1
\\machine2
\\machine3
\\machine4
\\machine5

C:\blah>net view machine8

\\machine8\shareddocs
\\machine8\printer

      Just seems a tad strange is all...

        All the machines on my network are on the same domain, with the win2k server as the PDC.

        Do they all have folders that are shared? Cos if they don't that could be why they aren't showing up.

          Yeah, XP Pro has a "shared docs" by default, as you know; and all of these machine have them.

          Possibly the issue is the second thing you mention; this is a p2p environment, not a domain env, and so there is no PDC.

          I'm hoping not to have to mess with one ... do I need one in order to see all the boxen? That's what I can't find out. My brother the NT sysadmin says I should be able to have as many boxes in the workgroup as the subnet will hold; I thought that I'd read there was going to be a limit, after which a PDC was needed, but I've not found confirmation of this on the WWW as of yet...

            Not sure about the whole limit thing...

              Well, talking with you about it has inspired me to do a bit more googling, so all's not in vain.

              Here's a brief description of what I thought I'd heard before.

              http://www.wown.info/j_helmig/wxpdifs.htm

              Best I can figure, the 8 XP Pro machines noticed that the machine in the library had XP home, and limited their connectivity.

              Back to the drawing board....

              PS> Thanks for your help!

                I've had this issue, at work and home. Your issue is with the browse master. Thats the computer that keeps the list of all computers on the network. I've had it where two computers thought they were both browse masters when only one should be. Its a long explination on how this works but basicly the computers hold an election and the computer with the latest and highest OS wins and becomes the browse master. Since you have all XP Pro computers maybe they are having a hard time deciding...??? I never realy got it fixed because I then upgraded to a domain but I'll dig up some old info I had....

                Here ya go..
                Adding to and Removing from the Browse List
                Browser Service
                Troubleshooting
                Possible Fix (Reg Hack)

                I know theres more info on this, just search for "browse master" or "browser master". Good luck.

                  8 days later

                  One thing you might want to check is if all of the machines have file and printer sharing enabled and if netbios is enabled. I had a similar problem with my laptop not seeing, and not being seen on the network, and it turned out I had to enable netbios over tcp/ip because of my silly router. :p

                    Write a Reply...