Master Browser Elections!!!

[blairking]

Hi, all! Hopefully, someone out there can help me. I'm running a WinNT 4.0 SP 6a server. The event logs are full of Event ID 8003 errors:
The master browser has received a server announcement from the computer THEATRE that believes that it is the master browser for the domain on transport NetBT_El90x1. The master browser is stopping or an election is being forced.

the computer name changes sometimes but its always either a server or a workstation with a share.

Does anyone know how to get rid of this error?? I've checked MS TechNet and the KnowledgeBase but didn't really find much to help!

thanks!

[mairving]

All NT/2000/XP machines want to be the master browser by default. If the Server is rebooted, then it will kick the other non-server machines off so that it can be the Master Browser. It really doesn't hurt anything with the error message as it is. It only adds a slight bit to network traffic. You can force a machine not to be a Master Browser by a registry key change. The Key is HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Browser\Parameters\MaintainServerList. The values are Auto, True and False. Auto is the default which means make me master if necessary. True is make me Master , if there is a tie with another Auto, the True value forces an election. False is the last value which means never to be master browser. Here are a couple of links:
Microsoft
NT Tips

[blairking]

Hey, thanks a lot! i'll give that a try. I couldn't find any of that on MS's site.

thanks!

[mairving]

Originally posted by blairking Hey, thanks a lot! i'll give that a try. I couldn't find any of that on MS's site. thanks!

The key on Microsoft's site is not using their search engine but Google like so: searchterms :site:microsoft.com. Works much better than MS search.