Article ID: 188598
Article Last Modified on 11/1/2006
APPLIES TO
- Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Developer Edition
- Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4
This article was previously published under Q188598
SUMMARY
It is sometimes necessary that clients or servers on your network need to reregister their NetBIOS names with a Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) server. Previously, this required restarting the client so that all names associated with that client would be released and reregistered during the startup process.
In Service Pack 4 for Windows NT, a new feature has been added to the Windows NT version of the utility Nbtstat.exe. The -RR parameter will allow Windows NT clients to release their NetBIOS names and reregister them with their WINS server.
MORE INFORMATION
Below are some situations where reregistering a WINS client's names would be necessary:
- The registration has been lost or deleted in WINS and needs to be refreshed by the client. Nbtstat.exe -RR will send a release and renewal of all NetBIOS services associated with the WINS client, creating a new record.
- The registration exists in some WINS servers but not in others. A reregistration is useful here to increment the WINS version Ids, which will help in causing a WINS server replication to occur.
A Microsoft WINS server record includes a WINS client's NetBIOS names, its IP addresses, and a value called a version ID. WINS servers use a client record's version ID to keep track of records that need to be replicated to other server. This allows new WINS records to be replicated without sending the entire database from one server to another. This version ID is incremented when new records are added, but not when they are renewed. By quickly releasing and renewing the record, an existing records version ID will be incremented.
When you run Nbtstat.exe -RR, a timer is invoked so the command cannot be repeated for 2 minutes. This is to prevent a WINS server becoming saturated by client renewals if this process is repeatedly invoked on a server.
NOTE: The -RR is case sensitive.
Additional query words: registration nbtstat -RR WINS records
Keywords: kbfea kbinfo KB188598
