locate all WINS servers on Network

Question

_{Monday, September 20, 2010 7:41 PM}

I need to locate all WINS servers on a very Large windows 2003 AD network ( multple sites) and find out which WINS servers are actually registering computers names. what is the best tool to acomplish this task? I'm told to remove all Wins Services that are not registering computers names.

thanks ,

All replies (5)

_{Monday, September 20, 2010 8:07 PM}

I would start by connecting to the "known" WINS servers using the WINS Admin tool.  Take a look at the replication partners.  Also, if you expand Active Registrations, Right Click and Delete Owners, you can see a list of all of the WINS servers that have registrations in the database you are looking at on that server.

I would also look at all of the DHCP scopes and see if any WINS server information is being used to configure your clients.

Additionally, you may have other WINS servers that are not participating in a replication topology, so you may have to do some port scanning and look for systems that respond on 42 (port used for replication) and 1512 (WINS server listens for client traffic).

When you get all of that worked out, this may be of some help for you.

Best Practices When Running WINS On Your Network
http://www.anitkb.com/2010/04/best-practices-when-running-wins-on.html

Visit: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

_{Tuesday, September 21, 2010 2:32 AM}

Hi mperone,

Thanks for post here.

JM had provided a few great mentions for you to find out which WINS server is still running in your network .

Meanwhile I would like recommend you to take look the article below , You might consider to use Network Monitor to capture WINS name resolution queries, that might help you to achieve the goal.

Decommissioning WINS

http://blogs.technet.com/b/craigf/archive/2010/07/09/decommissioning-wins.aspx

The further suggestion that you might also consider to detect the installed WINS server roles on each member server of your domain by script , here are also some articles for you refer:

Detecting what Server Roles are installed on Windows Server 2008

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/patricka/archive/2008/03/05/detecting-what-server-roles-are-installed-on-windows-server-2008.aspx

Fun with WMI Filters in Group Policy

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2008/09/11/fun-with-wmi-filters-in-group-policy.aspx

Thanks.

Tiger Li

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_{Thursday, September 23, 2010 8:08 AM}

Hi mperone,

If there is any update on this issue, please feel free to let us know.

We are looking forward to your reply.

Thanks.

Tiger Li

Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

_{Thursday, September 23, 2010 2:54 PM}

thank you all for those great ideas, I am having a meeting on monday to go over the companys approved methods for doing this, I will inform you then.

_{Tuesday, September 28, 2010 8:50 AM}

Hi mperone,

I just want to check if the information provided was helpful. If there is any update on this issue, please feel free to let me know.
 
We are looking forward to your reply.

Thanks.

Tiger Li

TechNet Subscriber Support in forum
If you have any feedback on our support, please contact [email protected]  

Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.