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Auto-discovery is not working

Author: Luis Fernandes

Answer

PROBLEM

Auto-discovery is not finding computers.

ENVIRONMENT

  • GFI EndPointSecurity
  • GFI LanGuard
  • GFI EventsManager
  • All Supported Environments

SOLUTION

GFI Products rely on the same Microsoft technology that the net view command uses, which requires NetBios over TCP (NetBT).
  1. Go to a command prompt and run the following commands to see what they yield:
    • net view
    • net view /domain:YourDomainName
  2. If this fails to bring back any results, Netbios over TCP is probably disabled on your network card and/or the other machines on your network
    1. Check the GFI products machine's Local Area Connection Properties > TCP/IP Properties > Advanced button > Wins tab and enable Netbios over TCP/IP. If the setting is set to Default...from the DHCP... change it to Enable... in order to test. 
    2. From the command prompt, type the Net view command. If you still get There are no enties in the list, go to another computer in the same subnet and enable Netbios over TCP/IP as you did with the GFI product machine and repeat the test. 
    3. If this works and the NetBios setting was set to Default...from the DHCP... you will have to change the setting in your DHCP server to enable it for other computers in the network. 
  3. If, after getting the above to work, you may discover that you can only resolve hosts on the local subnet GFI product is on. The reason for this would be that you don't have a WINS name server on your network. NetBT will use broadcasts for the local subnet, but these broadcasts normally do not go across routers. For this, you need a WINS name server.

CAUSE

NetBios over TCP (NetBT) is disabled.