solved: no servers responding; wrong machine name in history

[wscott44]

Hi Folks:

I have been using WinGate for a couple years, 3-6 machines, recently upgraded to 5.2. A couple versions ago, I started to see wrong names in the history file for some PCs. Behavior on the clients seemed to be fine so I did not fuss with it much. However, in the past week, one machine always has trouble getting a response from the server. I have been through the config guidelines over and over; last night shut everything down, brought machines up one at a time and watched the history. Flushed the dns cache as well. Here is a small topography and what I see wrong -->

192.168.0.1 : deskpro5133 : server : Windows 2000 Pro SP3
192.168.0.2 : ourfirstmicron : client : Windows 98 SE
192.168.0.5 : micron2-win2k : client : Windows 2000 Pro SP4


Boot deskpro & watch history -- shows deskpro5133 with 127.0.0.1
Boot ourfirstmicron -- shows MICRON2-WIN2K with 192.168.0.2 (wrong)
Boot micron2-win2k -- NO SERVERS ARE RESPONDING!!! WHY???


When I have upgraded, I did a complete, custom uninstall to remove all before reinstalling. There must be a database or mapping file hanging around that needs to be cleared. Please help!!!

Thank you,
Wayne Scott
==========

I think the whole problem started long ago when I had to install a Nortel Extranet Access Client to access my employer's network from home. This was > 2 years ago. The machine would crash if I installed WinGate with ENS; hence, I got used to custom installs and omitting ENS. I have since removed the Nortel Extranet Access Client and reinstalled WinGate 5.2 today after a complete wipe-out. ENS is included. Everything is looking good so far after several hours of operation. Whew!!!

==========

[olaf.krause]

I also saw something like that in Version 5.2 - but for me it is NOT reproducable. The history showed me a hostname of a machine I had connected at the IP-Adresse some weeks ago. Now a new machine with a different name is using this address.

The old name is NOT known if I do a ping, tracert or check the DNS entries (I'm running Win2003 Server with AD,DNS,DHCP - so no Wingate DNS,DHCP Server is used). I also ask where does this obsolete name come from?

ciao

Olaf

[ChrisH]

Olaf,
Were you using WG's DHCP server at one time? If you were, and you check in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Qbik Software\WinGate\DHCP\Leases (using registry precautions) do you still see any leased IP addresses there? My guess would be that WG still had this IP address leased under the old NetBios name and when the "new" IP address came along, WG looked up what it had stored for that IP and the old computername showed up and was displayed in GateKeeper.

[wscott44]

Two things that have worked for me, usually have been a requirement to straighten out network confusion -->

1) Installing a new version of WinGate over top of an existing version has been problematic for me. What has worked best is to do a complete, CUSTOM uninstall and select every item in every panel (except an mfc42.dll, I think it is called); this wipes the slate clean. Then reinstall, which requires the entering of the license data again.

2) Shut down the entire network for some time, 10 minutes or so, then bring the machines back up one at a time. I think each machine keeps a cache of its network neighborhood, and instead of correctly flushing and synchronizing they get cross polluted. I cannot prove it; I just know what has worked for me.

Sometimes I have had machines crash during boot, until I start from a quiescent state. If machines are on the network, there IS traffic flowing; and it seems like the booting machine has to be protected from interrupts to get past BSOD and a weird KERNEL error. Sometimes just unplugging the network cable until it is up and stable has been sufficient.


Please try these suggestions and tell us how it goes.

Wayne Scott

[adrien]

thanks for this information, I'll have another look at the DHCP server.

we have seen in the past that sometimes it doesn't refresh its understanding of the DHCP client information, and that can lead to wrong machine names being given to an IP address.

Adrien

[wscott44]

You're welcome. My IP addresses have been statically allocated for years. If DHCP has been active on my systems, it is not something I have depended on, as far as I know.

One more thing -- sometimes it helps to shut everything down and change machine names before bringing back up.

Wayne Scott

[Mendoza]

Do you have custom "hosts" file ?
Maybe you, or another machine has one and one IP has another host name.If that machine becomes Master Browser" , that might lead to this kind of situations.I think...

[ingeltra]

i don't know if i have a similar problem, i always use static ip adress and i set the client not to use the proxy server when using the dhcp server
but once a client used a dynamic ip it was assigned 192.168.0.2 (i set a static ip later for him 192.168.0.97) and after a while the static ip computer 192.168.0.2 strated and an ip conflict happens and since then net bios name in the gate keeper of 192.168.0.2 appears to be that of 192.168.0.97 though if i tracert 192.168.0.2 form the server (192.168.0.1)
gives the true netbois name of this ip. the weird thing, when i tracert 192.168.0.2 from a client (ip= 192.168.0.48) i get the false netbois name which is actually that of 192.168.0.97 so which computer is acctually giving the real netbois name?