Win2K slow to connect

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I have several Win2K computers that are very slow to establish ethernet communications to other hosts on my network. The connection usually takes about 15 seconds, sometimes longer. WinNT computers on the same network connect almost instantly. Any ideas on what might be the problem?

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Do you have both a local DNS and WINS server. If I remember right NT 4 prefers a WINS server, but Windows 2000 prefers a DNS server. Thus if you don’t have a DNS server setup, a windows 2000 machine will try to find that first, to find out where things are, and when that fails, it too will then try for a WINS server. That is probably what is causing the delay.

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Would this still be the case if they are using fixed IP addresses? Guess I should have mentioned that in my original post, sorry.

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Absolutely. Whether you have fixed IP Addresses or not, your machine still needs a method to ‘find’ things. On the internet you need a DNS server. On a LAN, you need either a WINS or a DNS server. Windows 2000 was setup to be more DNS dependant (so eventually WINS can be phased out…at least that is what I hear….i doubt it for a long time.)

A fixed IP address just means you aren’t getting information from a DHCP server. It in no way tells you where everything is. (You can do that with LMHost files…..)

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