Windows NetBios Network Browser Problem Fix
Friday, November 2nd, 2007My Windows boxes can’t browse each other on the network. After reading a bunch of Microsoft KB articles, I discover nbtstat.exe:
nbtstat.exe -A ip-address
This command will download the NetBios name table from the remote IP address. It also appears to update your local cache with the NetBios name of the remote host at ip-address.
I verified this behavior with the following commands:
nbtstat.exe -R (purge the NetBios name cache)
nbtstat.exe -c (verify that NetBios name cache is empty)
nbtstat.exe -A ip-address
nbtstat.exe -c (verify that NetBios name of ip-address is in local cache)
So if you know the ip address of a remote Windows host, this appears to be a way to force a name mapping into your local NetBios cache.