Home / server / Questions / 68347
Accepted
Rune Jacobsen
Asked: 2009-09-25 02:27:27 +0800 CST

Win 2003 backup domain controller can't browse files or see (most) other computers

  • 772

We have two Windows 2003 server domain controllers in our work network.

The first - dc01 - is the main domain controller and works as expected.

The second - dc02 (surprisingly) - is currently serving as an Exchange 2003 server, and also as a backup domain controller.

There are also 3 other Windows 2003 servers on the network and a number of clients.

dc01 can browse everything.

Other servers can browse everything.

Clients can browse everything.

However, dc02 can not browse (via network shares in Explorer for instance) other computers besides dc01.

If I go into Active Directory Users and Computers on dc01, I can see Users and Computers as expected.

If I go into the same place on dc02, I can see all the domain users, but not the computers...!?

It would seem poor dc02 is not entirely happy in the domain, but I don't know what to look for. Does anyone have any ideas around figuring out what is going on here?

Thanks!

windows-server-2003

3 Answers

  1. Firstly, there are no BDCs in an AD network.

    Anyway, first port of call for any such issue should always be your TCP/IP configuration on the DCs NIC, and your DNS server settings. Double-check these, ensure that they are valid for your domain, correct them if not, then establish whether or not things are still broken.

    • 1

  2. Agree with mh ... check that dc02 can see dc01:

    ping dc01.whatever.com
nslookup -type=srv _ldap._tcp.whatever.com

    DNS zone for whatever.com look ok? All underscored zone records there?

    _msdcs.whatever.com
_sites.whatever.com
_tcp.whatever.com
_udp.whatever.com

    Any firewalling between them, or installed on them? You could use PortQry(UI) to check that dc02 can see dc01's ports; LDAP, Kerberos, etc:

    o   Global Catalog Server TCP 3268
o   LDAP Server TCP 389
o   LDAP Server UDP 389
o   RPC TCP 135
o   Kerberos TCP 88
o   Kerberos UDP 88
o   RPC randomly allocated temporary high TCP ports TCP 1024 – 65535
o   kpasswd TCP 464
o   kpasswd UDP 464
o   NetBIOS Datagram Service UDP 138
o   NetBIOS Name Resolution UDP 137
o   NetBIOS Session Service TCP 139
o   SMB TCP 445

    Event viewer saying anything?

    • 0
  3. Best Answer

    Ok, sorry for the slow update here, but I finally figured it out by following the clues and abusing the server in every way possible.

    The following helped me get it to work:

    Microsoft KB article

    So I'll leave this here in case someone gets the same obscure problem in the future!

    • 0