Cannot ping by hostname

[bftechstaff]

Hello all,

I have a workgroup setup of about 15 computers running Windows 2000 Pro, they are connected to a Netgear 10/100 switch which in turn is connected to a D-Link 504 (or similar) router. There is a Windows 2003 Server machine on the same network.

We have set it up such that all computer's "My Documents" point to the 2k3 Server, and is stored in a folder on that machine. One machine was having a hardware problem and had to be replaced. I replaced the machine with another one running W2k and set it up the same way as the old one. I copied over the older machine's IP & hostname so everything would be the same. The problem I am having now is that I can't ping any machine on the local network by hostname (NetBIOS). I CAN, however, ping by IP address. The first thing I checked was the DNS info, which was fine... and I can ping external sites like google, yahoo, etc, just fine. Also - I don't see any computer in "My Network Places" ( I am 200% positive they're all on the same network).

So far I have: checked DNS and tried to use \\IP to get to the server, but no luck. The services on that machine look fine also - I even tried turning on (almost) all of them, in case there was some service missing, but it made no difference.

I am stumped. Any suggestions?

Thanks for reading.

[DimaYasny]

google master browser settings
and the best way to go would be to actually set the 2003 up as a DC with proper active directory settings, put all the workstations in the domain, instead of the workgroup and set up wins as well, for the netbios name resolution to work properly

[ameen_zaman]

yeah if u r having too many pc`s better go for DC u check default gateway not dns does other pc`s can acess this if yes try to chnage ip or system name

[TheOgre]

Did you join the replacement machine to the domain after removing the old machine from the domain?