A duplicate name exists on the network

Question

At work I am running a windows 2k advanced server domain with no DHCP.  I recently upgraded a dell workstation from w98 to W2k Pro.  I did a clean install not an upgrade and used NTFS.  As soon as I set the IP address for the workstation I received the message that ' A duplicate name exists on the network'.  There is no other computer with the same name on the LAN.  I have tried different IP addresses and computer names and always get the same message. I can access the Internet through the LAN router.  I can ping the domain controller and other workstations by IP address and by computer name. If I try to join the computer to the Domain I get an error message saying the Domain can not be found. I figured there might be a corrupted file so I did another clean install of W2K from a different CD and got the exact same results. The only time I have ever seen the message 'A duplicate name exists on the network' is when trying to join a domain and the name already exists on the network.  There is no other computer with the computer names or IP addresses I have tried. This message is appearing as soon as I set the static IP address. If I reboot the computer the message appears before the log on screen. Does anyone have a suggestion for resolving this problem??

jwatt · Answer

Is there a WINS server running on the Win2K machine? Check to see if there's an entry in the WINS database for that name. If there are any, remove them from the WINS server's database. Jim

rzahm · Answer

I solved the problem by taking the pc to another building that uses DHCP. I was able to join that domain with DHCP. I then assigned a static IP for that building and that worked.

I then returned the PC to the original building. I was able to set a static IP, assign a computer name and join the domain. Everything is now working fine.

Any ideas what caused the original problem??

jwatt · Answer

Any ideas what caused the original problem??

The only cases I've seen like that involved duplicate names registered with a WINS server. The nastiest one involved a registration from another site. It had replicated to our site through the company's WAN.

We spent days unsnarling replication problems after we discovered that. The immediate fix was to remove the "foreign" name from our local WINS server. Since the other machine wasn't local, the mechanism for "challenging" a WINS registration didn't work.

Here's a Microsoft article on WINS registration that might be helpful in understanding some of the subtleties of WINS.

Jim

Networking, Internet, & Bluetooth

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