Computer browsing

MassiveJim · 1 Sep 2018 at 13:14

Why is computer browsing not working properly on my machines?
sometimes everything works, but most of the time there is at least one machine missing from the network list.
Server is running DNS/DHCP/AD
DNS is configured with no reverse lookup zones, the DNS servers are 192.168.20.10 & 192.168.20.20 which are the IPs of the 2 cards connected to the 8 port switch
My 2 switches below have link aggregation on 2 ports to each other.
All machines are members of the (same) domain

Setup (at present)
Switch 1 (HP Procurve 8 port)
connections:
server (2008 R2) (Dual port connection)
Desktop (W10)
Switch 2 (dual aggregated connection)

Switch 2 (HP Procurve 24 port)
Desktop2 (W7)
Desktop3 (W8)
Laptop (W10)
Switch1 (dual aggregated connection)

Network browser for each machine shows the following
Server - Server/Laptop
Desktop1 - Server/Desktop1/Laptop
Desktop2 - Server/Desktop2/Laptop )
Desktop3 - Server/Laptop
Laptop - Server/Laptop

All machines can be accessed if the name is manually entered into Windows explorer and all machines can be pinged. They just don't automatically appear on the network list when you either browse to it or expand it on the lefthand pane of an explorer window.

Delta3D · 1 Sep 2018 at 13:23

Have you got Network Discovery enabled on the Desktops?

bremen1874 · 1 Sep 2018 at 13:30

Network browsing has never worked reliably. I've usually found it best to ignore it completely and get used to typing UNC paths.

TechMinerUK · 1 Sep 2018 at 14:14

bremen1874 said:
Network browsing has never worked reliably. I've usually found it best to ignore it completely and get used to typing UNC paths.

This, we once had a customer request that it work however after ages of attempting to get it working (Server 2012 and Windows 7 environment) it just didn't seem to want to play ball. Even disabling all firewall rules didn't seem to make it play ball.
On the other hand we dropped another Windows 7 and 10 PC onto the network and they worked fine

MassiveJim · 1 Sep 2018 at 14:31

All pcs set to sharing a

Delta3D said:
Have you got Network Discovery enabled on the Desktops?

Yes checked this on all pcs prior to posting.
After I made the OP I changed a couple of firewall settings and rebooted the server and all PCs then appeared on every machine (when I refreshed)
But just rebooted Desktop2 and it now only shows the server.

bremen1874 said:
Network browsing has never worked reliably. I've usually found it best to ignore it completely and get used to typing UNC paths.

I had resigned myself to this quite some time ago, until I went to a customers site and theirs was working perfectly, so I thought maybe its something in my setup that is stopping it working correctly.
Certainly the firewall settings were causing some problems but it obviously wasn't just down to that.