I've been trying to get a windows workgroup network stable for a while now.

All machines run Windows 2000 service pack 4, all patches applied.
Machine 1 acts as the file server, with a static IP address. However, reading Andy's comments on this question I realized that it's possible that two machines are in fact sharing the same IP address, since I hadn't realized that the dhcp server [a router in this case] didn't know to not assign a static IP address.

the issue I'm coming across is this, hard to explain.

It's a question of which computer is being treated as the so called 'master browser' on the network. I've set in the registry on the fileserver for it to act as a domainmaster or whatever it's called.

I've tried two different settings, one is turning off the master browser function, which does get rid of the eventid errors related to mrxsmb, but now there are many errors connecting to the network. Dropped mapped network drives which aren't actually dropped, but act like they are, failure to connect or reconnect to network drives, etc.

I'm trying to figure out how to once and for all resolve this problem. The IP address is almost certainly part of the problem, that explains the 'two machines with same name on network' I think, but maybe not.

Any advice or recommendations on how to stabilize the darn thing would be appreciated.

All machines run Windows 2000
Event ID error codes are 8003, mrxsmb

I'm wondering if this could be related to not having all the machines on the workgroup configured to use a time server, possibly.

However, 8003 is a master browser issue. I've tried turning off the computer master browser service, that makes the event id errors go away, but the network errors remain. In fact, now that I've tried turning back on the master browser service, the errors seem to have increased dramatically.

Even though the main machine that is working as the file server is set to force itself to be the master browser, it still isn't happening.

These mrxsmb error codes have always been by far the trickiest and most poorly documented error codes I've found on any networking problem.
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I've also been having problems with mrxsmb event ID 8003, finally found a solution, which is very easy to implement.

It's all a matter of how Window's networks handle their master browser function.

I'll assume you have one machine that is acting as a server, or primary box. This machine can either be running as a straight windows computer, a virtual fileserver, or it can be a standard windows server. In other words, if it's running xp or windows 2000 standard professional editions, or if it's running Windows 2000 or 2003 server makes no difference in the solution.

First you'll need to check the registry on the machine that is acting as the server, then you'll update each machine in the workgroup.

Hit Start -> Run type in: regedit

Hit enter, this brings up the registry editor.

Navigate to to:


Click on the Parameters item, then we'll be modifying 2 of the values. To modify values in the registry, simply highlight the item you want to modify, right click on it, select modify, then change the values to the following:

For the central machine, that will either be the server, or be acting like a server, say a file sharing machine that everyone's data is stored, make the values:


For the client machines, these two settings will be the following:


If all has gone well, and you've done this change to each machine, the MRXSMB EventID 8003 should go away. Hopefully anyway.
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