Question : Windows 9x shared printer access via DNS alias

I'm migrating printers to a new windows 2000 server and I'd like to use a DNS alias PRINT1, to provide a bit of future proofing (to make it easy to swap the server out later). Windows 2000 and NT clients are happily working with the new server, but I have a major problem with the Win 9x clients. I just cannot get them to browse via DNS name. Even though they have DNS enabled in the TCP/IP properties (and therefore the tickbox 'Netbios resolution uses DNS' checked in winipcfg).

Ive tried \\print1 , \\print1.corp.blah, \\ip.address and \\realname. Only \\realname and \\ip.address work. I even added a WINS static mapping for print1 to the IP, but that didn't work either.

Any ideas?

Answer : Windows 9x shared printer access via DNS alias

OK, managed to solve this one myself.

You need to do the following on the Windows 2000 Server:

In order to get the server to listen to DNS alias based requests create the value:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters\
Value name: DisableStrictNameChecking
Data type: REG_DWORD
Radix: Decimal
Value: 1

As in: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;281308

Also, to allow DNS aliases to work with 9x clients the value below must be created:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters\
Value name: DisableStrictNameChecking
Data type: REG_MULTI_SZ
Value: ALIAS NAMES ON SEPARATE LINES


Basically what was happening is that 95 was saying 'hello print1 give me an smb share' and 2000 was replying, 'hello I am realname here is your share'. 95/98 didn't like that and so bombed out with a 'network name not found'. Adding the optional names parameter allows 2000 to pretend it is the name being requested.