At home, in a LAN of five devices, I have a Windows 7 desktop PC that kept dropping its network connection once a day, every day. I found out from the System log that a “forced election” event (ID 8033, source BROWSER) took place at the exact same time, so I set to work trying to stop the event from occurring at all. I tried everything from stopping services to registry hacks to no avail.

After trying for days I gave up, but some weeks later I came across this article and everything clicked into place.

As I ran nbtstat on the PC, I found out it was not part of the LAN’s workgroup, but in the Windows default workgroup (d’oh!!). This meant the PC was the master browser in WORKGROUP, but in the primary workgroup a NAS was the master. Every time at 9.45 PM that NAS shut down, and in less than an hour the election happened; the election time varied, so I did not suspect the NAS was involved at all.

I moved the PC into the primary workgroup and all is well. Thanks again!

Hi Jeff,

I had this issue as a side-effect of another problem I had. If you’re using workgroups, check that the PC and the NAS are in the same one, otherwise Windows won’t show the NAS in Network even if the PC can connect to the NAS just fine.

Hope this helps!

A Win7 desktop PC I have at home kept dropping its LAN connection once a day, every day. Windows logs showed that a “forced election” (event ID 8033, source BROWSER) took place at that exact moment, so I tried everything from stopping services to hacking the registry to prevent that – all for naught.

I gave up when I thought there was nothing more I could try, but weeks later I came across this article and everything clicked into place.

As I ran the commands, I discovered that the desktop was in the Windows default WORKGROUP instead of my home workgroup (d’oh!!), and was the only machine and hence the master browser of that workgroup. Every night when the wired NAS – the master browser of the primary workgroup – shut down, the election happened with a slight delay, hence why I didn’t even suspect this.

At any rate, moving the PC into the primary workgroup stopped the forced elections and I couldn’t be happier. Thanks again!

I have W7 Ultimate, x64, windows installed on C drive and your EXE in the C drive. Also, right clicked and ran as administrator.

The network runs off a Buffalo router. 4 computers and 1 NAS. Only one computer has an issue. (It can’t connect to the WD mybooklive NAS.)

I’ve simplified the network by turning off 2 of the computers.

Computer “JOHNS” has the issue. It’s running win xp 32 bit sp3.
Computer “ASI-JAMES” is fine. It’s running XP pro 64 bit (up to date)
The NAS is operating fine and accessible by computers 2, 3 &4.

NOTE: the other computers are #3 Vista laptop (no problem) and W7 64 bit laptop (no problems)

Here’s output from your program

LANscanner v1.3 – ScottiesTech.Info

Scanning LAN…

ASI-JAMESB 192.168.1.101 00-08-54-8E-DC-99 MSHOME
JOHNS 192.168.1.111 00-E0-18-ED-A0-B6 MSHOME MASTER
MYBOOKLIVE 192.168.1.148

Press any key to exit…

From “JOHNS” pinging “MYBOOKLIVE” fails. Pinging the router and “ASI-JAMESB” succeed. Mapping to it also fails. and using the WD install program to discover the NAS also fails.

From “ASI-JAMESB” (and the other computers) pinging “MYBOOKLIVE” succeeds. It can be mapped and the WD program discovered it just fine. Data can be written to and read from the NAS. In fact, the ASI-JAMESB computer can copy files from the JOHNS computer and write them onto the NAS.

Help!

That’s what I’d try, anyway!

On my machine, LANscanner works REALLY, REALLY slowly if I have the “VirtualBox Host-Only Network” adapter enabled in Network & Sharing Center -> Change adapter settings.

Disabling the Vbox adapter doesn’t break Vbox at all, and then LANscanner works fine. Dunno why, though.