WINS settings

  • Thread starter Thread starter Allison
  • Start date Start date
A

Allison

I have several Windows 2000 and Windows XP workstations in my domain. I
want to stop using WINS and disable NETBIOS on our servers and workstations.
Is there a way to do this without having to visit each machine?

thanks
 
Do you have Group Policy in your Win 2000 (AD) environment?

If yes, fire up a GP at the domain level and disable services of your choice.
Otherwise, you can use the "netsh" command or REG files to achieve the
same objectives (via computer startup script for example).
 
I am using Group Policy and I am not using DHCP. So what you are saying is
that the 'netsh' command can remove WINS entries for all of my workstations?
 
DHCP would be the easiest way as you can set the NetBT options there. I'm
shocked you're not using DHCP -you've either got a very small environment,
very old, legacy environment, or your boss is an ass <g>

You could simply disable the NetBT Helper Service via the method Des
suggested -that'll pretty much disable NetBT.

Might I ask why though? There's still a hell of a lot of things that depend
on NetBT. You can force you're NT5.x boxes to only use SMB over TCP/IP
instead of disabling NetBT altogether...


--

Paul Williams

http://www.msresource.net
http://forums.msresource.net


I am using Group Policy and I am not using DHCP. So what you are saying is
that the 'netsh' command can remove WINS entries for all of my workstations?
 
We're disabling Netbios because of security concerns. We are really
tightening security and have had a large security corporation come in and
analyze our network security. They were able to sniff out large amounts of
data related to the Netbios protocol. Basically it is a very archaic,
unsecure protocol and we do not feel that we need it anymore since most of
all traffic on a Windows domain uses DNS. We have tested this on several
different levels and have found that our workstations and their associated
applications work fine using DNS and have WINS provides no real benefit
anymore.
 
Fair enough. Good call then!!!

Last place I worked we didn't use WINS - just good old DNS.

It's just many apps still use NetBT : (


--

Paul Williams

http://www.msresource.net
http://forums.msresource.net


We're disabling Netbios because of security concerns. We are really
tightening security and have had a large security corporation come in and
analyze our network security. They were able to sniff out large amounts of
data related to the Netbios protocol. Basically it is a very archaic,
unsecure protocol and we do not feel that we need it anymore since most of
all traffic on a Windows domain uses DNS. We have tested this on several
different levels and have found that our workstations and their associated
applications work fine using DNS and have WINS provides no real benefit
anymore.
 
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