Question : NetWare 4.11/IPX Connectivity, Master Browser Issues, and deleting DirectHostBinding Key

We have been experiencing a large number of Master Browser issues on one of our businest subnets, where the workstations keep looking for, or declaring themselves the Master Browser. This is not only producing erroneous traffic, but preventing many of these machines from processing the Group Policies in Active Directory.

All of these issues are isolated to this one subnet, and do not show up on any of the Domain Controllers. Furthermore, the following values are set on all the affected workstations:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Browser\Paramters\IsDomainMaster = FALSE

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Browser\Paramters\MaintainServerList = Auto

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Browser\Paramters\ServiceDll = %systemroot%\system32\browser.dll

All of these systems use the Novell client (from version 4.83 up to very recent versions) to connect to Novell 4.11 servers that do not (and cannot) support TCP/IP, so all communication with these systems is handled via IPX.

All of the Master Browser issues are specific to the NWLnkNB transport - Broadcasting NetBios through Netware (which, in this case, is IPX). Our theory is that since these workstations will never see the Domain Controllers via IPX, they constantly cast around looking for a Master Browser.

All of these workstations have an additional reg value:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Browser\Paramters\DirectHostBinding, which then mentions the IPX protocol as the first protocol. Essentially, it appears as if the Novell client is forcing all NetBIOS requests over IPX. On workstations where we've removed the DirectHostBinding entry, after a reboot they no longer encounter Master Browser issues, and do not seem to have any issues with connectivity to Novell File Shares (we do not use these Novell servers for anything else other than as file servers).

We looked into removing the Novell client and replacing it with Microsoft's implementation (CSNW), but it also runs into this same binding issue.

Our question is this: Given that these client machines will only ever connect to these IPX only Novell 4.11 servers to access file shares, is there any harm in scripting out a removal of the DirectHostBinding entry in the registry?

Answer : NetWare 4.11/IPX Connectivity, Master Browser Issues, and deleting DirectHostBinding Key

We've been experimenting with that a lot, and our findings are that that's not possible to do reliable.

If your users are administrators you could script this with a tool like AutoITscript or Microsoft Scriptit, which can manipulate other programs. With that you could create a script that opens Control panel - Network settings, then click advanced etc.

It is however possible when installing a new pc with sysprep:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/263241/

(How to disable network bindings using the [Netbindings] section)