Think I found a vista glitch

[peewee_RotA]

I have a printer shared on a win7 machine. I set up the printer on a vista machine by computer name. I changed the IP of the win7 machine. Now the Vista machine says the printer is available when the computer is on but fails to print with an error saying it can't communicate with the printer. I think it sets up an ip specific printer port behind the scenes. When I re-added it by computer name it now prints fine.


I wonder if this happens with other versions of windows. Regardless, vista sucks. 

[VaeVictis]

well...

that doesnt sound right :/

cause that would reek total havoc on a network using dhcp...

[peewee_RotA]

well...

that doesnt sound right :/

cause that would reek total havoc on a network using dhcp...

Right. If this was a problem anywhere else, then most small businesses would have a hell of a time sharing printers. Most medium-large offices use static ips. It could also have to do with me switching the original machine from dynamic to static IP, but I know it kept getting assigned the Same IP because I kept track of it for various reasons. (testing games, etc.)

I wan't to say it couldn't have been the router because Vista was able to ping it fine by name and ip, and the whole deal with saying it was available in the printers & devices menu.

[QwazyWabbit]

It depends on whether Vista was home or upgraded to workgroup setting. In an enterprise a domain server would have provided master browser services and WINS resolution. When you are in home environment or workgroup environment then the highest ranking OS becomes the default master browser and this can often depend on boot order of the machines and whether UPnP is enabled, etc.

Win7 should out-rank Vista so whatever was going on it sounds like remapping it was the easiest fix. It would be interesting to DHCP both machines and then play musical IP's by changing the boot order to see if that makes the printer unavailable again but at home I set my main machines up with static and only let the laptops be dynamic.

Most medium to large enterprises don't use static IP's. It's too difficult to manage. They will set DHCP reservations for some services such as big printers, etc. but the main factor is printers are stand-alone, not attached to a computer like in a SOHO. Most of the big businesses I have worked in (Boeing, GE, Cat, Lockheed, others.) use DHCP and only select reservations as needed and they use VLAN to isolate work groups by function, then the machines in those VLAN are DHCP'd within it. This isolates the network traffic. I get to travel around a lot so I get to see how it's done industry wide. 

[reaper]

you could just set the IP or add a reservation, then add a DNS record.  that's better than using netbios names.  DHCP just assigns an IP address.  WINS will just go away and can use broadcasts then a unicast connection to the wins server, or broadcast alone etc., this is the only thing related in DHCP options, along with the WINS server.  this is not a glitch, you just set the DNS record and connect to the printer..

[VaeVictis]

hm... wait peewee, did you reboot BOTH machines and still had the problem?

if ya hadnt, i wonder if just rebooting both would fix the mapping error

[QwazyWabbit]

you could just set the IP or add a reservation, then add a DNS record.  that's better than using netbios names.  DHCP just assigns an IP address.  WINS will just go away and can use broadcasts then a unicast connection to the wins server, or broadcast alone etc., this is the only thing related in DHCP options, along with the WINS server.  this is not a glitch, you just set the DNS record and connect to the printer..

This assumes you have a local DNS server. I don't know any router for home use that has one. Windows workstations don't.

[reaper]

then put a record in the file hosts or type the ip address, WINS is going away, and is a pretty bogus concept to begin with.  I was saying DHCP has nothing to do with anything, DHCP just sets the WINS server and node type (broadcast, hybrid, unitcast). by default the host probably just sends a broadcast so you don't need the WINS server.  if you want the address to stay the same you set a reservation or type in the address.  I highly doubt this is some kind of bug, and to me it's a bad idea to type an unqualified name anywhere.

[reaper]

possibly the name was resolved via some kind of Windows service communication, then it needed Netbios over TCP/IP with a layer 2 broadcast, and maybe the firewall on the windows 7 machine didn't like that (it shouldn't anyways, that's all the shit that has problems).  Just a guess, but the host file method or DNS is much better while Netbios name resolution is going away.  I would ping the computer name, not fully qualified, it's probably sending a broadcast for netbios name resolution, which is not resolving.