Monitoring and Troubleshooting the WINS Server

Using System Monitor to Monitor WINS Activity

The System Monitor utility is the main tool for monitoring system performance. System Monitor can track various processes on the Windows system in real time. The utility uses a graphical display that you can use to view current data, or log data. You can specify specific elements or components that should be tracked on the local computer and remote computers. You can determine resource usage by monitoring trends. System Monitor can be displayed in a graph, histogram, or report format. System Monitor uses objects, counters and instances to monitor the system

System Monitor is a valuable tool when you need to monitor and troubleshoot WINS specific activity and traffic being passed between the WINS server and WINS clients. Through System Monitor, you can set counters to monitor: Monitoring and Troubleshooting the WINS Server

The registrations being received by the WINS server
The releases being received by the WINS server
The name renewals being received by the WINS server
The number of queries being sent to the WINS server.

To start System Monitor,

Click Start, Administrative Tools, and then click Performance.
When the Performance console opens, open System Monitor

The WINS performance counters that you can monitor to track WINS activity are:

Failed Queries /sec; indicates the number of failed queries
Failed Releases /sec; indicates number of failed releases
Group Conflicts /sec; indicates the number of group registrations which the WINS server received that caused conflicts with existing records in the WINS database.
Group Registrations /sec; indicates the number of group registrations being received by the WINS server.
Group Renewals /sec; indicates the number of group renewals being received by the WINS server.
Queries /sec; indicates the number of queries that the WINS server is receiving.
Releases /sec; indicates the number of releases that the WINS server is receiving.
Successful Queries /sec; indicates the number of successful queries.
Successful Releases /sec; indicates the number of successful releases.
Total Number of Conflicts /sec; indicates the total number of conflicts which were detected by the WINS server.
Total Number of Registrations /sec; indicates the total number of registrations being received by the WINS server.
Unique Conflict /sec; indicates the number of unique registrations which the WINS server received that caused conflicts with existing records in the WINS database.
Unique Registrations /sec; indicates the number of unique registrations being received by the WINS server.
Unique Renewals /sec; indicates the number of unique renewals being received by the WINS server.

How to track WINS activity through System Monitor

Click Start, Administrative Tools, and then click Performance.
When the Performance console opens, open System Monitor
Click the Add button to add WINS specific counters.
Select WINS Server beneath Performance objects
In Select counters from list, select the counters that you want to track.
Click Add.
Click Close.

Viewing WINS Server Statistics

It is recommended to view WINS server statistics to monitor WINS server performance. WINS server statistics are automatically refreshed at 10 minute intervals. This is the default setting.

The information that you can determine from viewing WINS server statistics is summarized below:

When last the WINS service was started.
When last the WINS database was started.
The defined replication partners.
When the last automatic or manual replication occurred.
The number of replications that occurred.
The number of failed communication attempts.
When last scavenging of the WINS database was started.
Total queries
Unique registrations
Group registrations
Total releases

How to view WINS server statistics

Click Start, Administrative Tools, and then click WINS to open the WINS console.
In the console tree, right-click the WINS server, and then select Display Server Statistics from the shortcut menu.
If you want to update the server statistics which are displayed, click the Refresh button

How to automatically refresh WINS server statistics

Click Start, Administrative Tools, and then click WINS to open the WINS console.
In the console tree, right-click the WINS server, and then select Properties from the shortcut menu.
On the General tab, select the Automatically update statistics every: checkbox.
Use the Hours, Minutes, and Seconds boxes to specify the time interval for refreshing WINS server statistics.
Click OK.

How to enable advanced logging on the WINS server

Click Start, Administrative Tools, and then click WINS to open the WINS console.
In the console tree, right-click the applicable WINS server, and then select Properties from the shortcut menu.
Click the Advanced tab.
Select the Log detailed events to Windows event log checkbox to enable the WINS service to log WINS specific events in the System log of the WINS server. It is recommended to enable this option for troubleshooting purposes.
Click OK.

Troubleshooting the WINS server

A few recommendations for troubleshooting WINS servers are discussed below:

Correctly configuring your WINS servers, and managing your WINS databases can greatly assist in reducing WINS specific issues or problems.
If your statically added mappings in the WINS database are overwriting the dynamic registrations in the database, ensure that the Overwrite unique static mappings at this server (migrate on) is enabled. All statically added mappings overwrite dynamically added records by default. Setting the Overwrite unique static mappings at this server (migrate on) option results in statically added mappings being handled in the same manner as dynamically added records.
If you experience problems with WINS replication, verify that each replication partner is correctly configured for replication. For WINS replication to occur, each WINS replication partner has to be configured for replication.
When using the Automatic partner configuration option for WINS replication, be wary of rogue WINS servers. It is recommended to enable the Accept records only for these owners option to prevent replicating with a rogue WINS server.
It is recommended to configure the Burst Handling value based on the number of WINS clients which each WINS server is expected to service.
- You should increase the burst handling value if your clients cannot successfully resolve NetBIOS names.
- You should decrease the burst handling value if your clients cannot successfully register their names with WINS.
If the name of the client has an active status in the WINS database, after you have physically removed it from your network, either of the events listed below occurred when the client shut down. This would have prevented the name from being unregistered from the WINS server:
- The WINS server was unavailable.
- There was a loss of connectivity between the WINS server and client.
- A power outage resulted in the machine not shutting down as expected.
To protect yourself from situations where the WINS database becomes corrupt or is lost, it is recommended to regularly back up the WINS database.

Troubleshooting WINS Clients

When a WINS client cannot access the WINS server, one of the first points you need to determine is to categorize the issue as either a server-end issue, or a client-end issue. Running the ipconfig/all command, and examining its output would assist in categorizing the issue.

Open a command prompt window.
Enter ipconfig /all.
Verify the following:
- Verify that the IP address of the primary WINS server is configured.
- Verify that this IP address is the correct address
- Verify that the address of the secondary WINS server is correct (if configured)
- Verify that the node type is shown as Hybrid

If the output displayed by the ipconfig/all command is correct, you need to determine the following:

Is the client using WINS for name resolution requests
Is the client using broadcasting for name resolution requests

You can determine the above information by using the nbtstat.exe command-line utility:

Enter nbtstat -r.
If the results indicate that the WINS server is typically used for name resolution and not broadcasting, use the nbtstat.exe command-line utility again to determine whether an incorrectly cached NetBIOS name is the issue.
To do this, enter nbtstat -c.

If after running ipconfig/all, nbtstat -r, and nbtstat -c; you verify that the correct information was displayed in the output of these commands; you need to determine the following:

Is the issue specific to only one NetBIOS name. If only this NetBIOS name is causing an issue, proceed to determine the following:
- Whether the NetBIOS name is registered in WINS.
- Whether NetBIOS name is registered with the appropriate IP address in the WINS database.
- Whether the NetBIOS name of the machine conflicts with another NetBIOS name.
- Whether the NetBIOS name is tombstoned.
Is the issue relevant for all NetBIOS names. This would mean that not a single NetBIOS name can be resolved: If no NetBIOS names can be resolved, proceed to verify the configuration of the WINS server.