Windows XP Workgroup issues

Since not everyone has a domain controller with AD at home, using Workgroup for file and print sharing is pretty common.

So what happens when a user of a newly rebuilt computer goes home, and is not able to browse workgroup? For those of us who are not using to using Workgroups, the answer is hard to pinpoint, but easy to fix.

The user reported that she can not see other computers in her workgroup. Her firewall was off, and the other computers are working fine in the workgroup. She can ping the other computers. She can also browse the other computers' resources by IP (eg, \\192.168.0.2). So what's missing?

I suspected that it had to do with NetBIOS name resolution. IPConfig shows a node type P (Peer to Peer). I didn't think that was correct, because P means you need a WINS server to perform NetBIOS resolution.

So what's going on? Turns out, it is because it was connected to an network that sets DHCP Option 46. If a computer connects to a network that sets DHCP Option 46 (WINS Node Type), and then connects to a network that does not change that option, it will stay a the previously set node type. In this case the node type was P. So you can manually change it to B for broadcast, which works well in a small workgroup environment.

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NetBt\Parameters\DHCPNodeType = 1 (for broadcast)