Having an interesting networking problem at work (WINS related)

[bcredeur97]

So we are in the middle of deploying new laptops to our users at work, and we've come upon an odd problem.

 

The laptops are Dell Latitude 7480's, and with them we are using the Dell D6000 universal dock for the user's desks. Now our problem is, when we deploy one of the user's laptops to their desk, Somehow the WINS servers (it's not gathering the IP addresses of the WINS server(s) from DHCP) aren't found when we connect the laptop over LAN through the dock, and netBIOS gets disabled. We don't necessarily need NetBIOS (well at least if I disable it on my machine, I can still map and use our network drives), but we need WINS working so our users can access their files over the network. The biggest symptom of the problem is when we plug in a machine that encounters the problem, we run the ipconfig /all command and it will show no WINS servers and show netBIOS as "disabled" for the Ethernet adapter on the dock.

 

moving the network cable to the laptop itself solves the issue... but we can't simply tell our users to do this... we need those docking station LAN ports to work properly.

 

What is perhaps the most interesting, is we have 4 spare machines that have the same exact setup down to the clone from the original master machine we setup. No matter what we try, the LAN port continues to work on these machines. We cannot duplicate the issue in the IT office. It's only when we move the computers to our user's desks that we encounter the issue. We've even tried setting up the spare machines for a particular user that encountered the problem and still have not encountered it. And my Boss tells me that both the Accounting office and our office are running off the same switch so all the settings are for the most part the same, and there shouldn't really be an issue on our network (remember when we plug the Ethernet cable into the LAN port on the PC itself (not the dock) then it works so that kind of rules out our network being the issue.)

We've contacted Dell Support a few times and they seemed to be stumped on the issue as well... Really I just thought I'd post here out of desperation to solve this problem.

 

So... any ideas?

[GOTSpectrum]

I'm presuming you have already done a fresh restart and clone? 

 

Have you checked if the finance department is running on a different VLAN to you guys? Same switch doesn't always mean same settings. Not that that should make a difference though. If you take the docks to the IT office does it work find there? If so then maybe there is a difference to the set up that could be looked into. If not you know the problem is with the docks themselves. Although I'd be surprised if you haven't already done all of this. I studied CISCO networking but only the basics so these are what comes to mind first. 

[bcredeur97]

6 minutes ago, Ben Quigley said:

I'm presuming you have already done a fresh restart and clone? 

 

Have you checked if the finance department is running on a different VLAN to you guys? Same switch doesn't always mean same settings. Not that that should make a difference though. If you take the docks to the IT office does it work find there? If so then maybe there is a difference to the set up that could be looked into. If not you know the problem is with the docks themselves. Although I'd be surprised if you haven't already done all of this. I studied CISCO networking but only the basics so these are what comes to mind first. 

our setup is a little too simple here; no VLAN's.

We know the problem isn't dock-specific, it's PC-specific. If we swap docks around everything stays constant (the computers that don't work, continue to not work). We have tried bringing one of our working machines to a different area (though it wasn't accounting... where 2 of our user's we deployed are having the problem but they won't let me in there at present -_-). I'll see what I can do...

We will be deploying another user with one of the Dell machines later today. That will be a good test. I'll go through each step one by one, continually testing for the issue. I'll update you guys my findings.

[Sir Asvald]

Are the drivers all installed and updated on the laptops for the docks? Which OS are you using on the laptops. As @Ben Quigley mentioned, It could be VLANs that are causing the issues. 

[bcredeur97]

1 minute ago, Abdul201588 said:

Are the drivers all installed and updated on the laptops for the docks? Which OS are you using on the laptops. As @Ben Quigley mentioned, It could be VLANs that are causing the issues. 

Yes and Windows 10 Pro...

see above post.

[Sir Asvald]

6 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

Yes and Windows 10 Pro...

see above post.

Okay, do you have any spear docks you can try on the laptops?

[Windows7ge]

I support Ben Quigley's theory. I have training under the Cisco CCENT, & CCNA curriculum. If you cannot replicate the issue elsewhere in the office take a laptop & dock that is affected and plug it in to a network port where it verified works. Different VLANs on managed switches can be configured to restrict access to servers based on IP or MAC filtering. Managed switches are smart enough to know if you're plugging in a router to one of their ports based on the MAC particularly if they have partial layer 3 functionality if the dock is doing any kind of routing and isn't just a pass-through then it might restrict network access. The IT office is more likely to have less restrictive access to the network while the office would be the oppose so checking the switch configuration for the office VLAN might be worth a shot.

[GOTSpectrum]

1 minute ago, bcredeur97 said:

our setup is a little too simple here; no VLAN's.

We know the problem isn't dock-specific, it's PC-specific. If we swap docks around everything stays constant (the computers that don't work, continue to not work). We have tried bringing one of our working machines to a different area (though it wasn't accounting... where 2 of our user's we deployed are having the problem but they won't let me in there at present -_-). I'll see what I can do...

We will be deploying another user with one of the Dell machines later today. That will be a good test. I'll go through each step one by one, continually testing for the issue. I'll update you guys my findings.

If the issues are machine specific, I would say it is either a software issue, driver, firmware etc. By cloned do you mean the entire setup is pulled from the master to the new system automatically or do you have to do it manually? 

Or, there is a physical issues, for example faulty hardware such as a dodgy slot. I'd look into getting them replaced myself if the software is a clone of a master. But, before that i would wipe the devices and start again, maybe something went awry in the process of cloning. 

 

Are the machines numbered in the sequence they were cloned? if so are the ones that don't work grouped together in some way or all after a specific date/time? That could show an issue with either the master or the cloning process.

[bcredeur97]

16 minutes ago, Abdul201588 said:

Okay, do you have any spear docks you can try on the laptops?

We've tried this. This is how we know it is machine-specific and not dock-specifc.

15 minutes ago, Ben Quigley said:

If the issues are machine specific, I would say it is either a software issue, driver, firmware etc. By cloned do you mean the entire setup is pulled from the master to the new system automatically or do you have to do it manually? 

Or, there is a physical issues, for example faulty hardware such as a dodgy slot. I'd look into getting them replaced myself if the software is a clone of a master. But, before that i would wipe the devices and start again, maybe something went awry in the process of cloning. 

 

Are the machines numbered in the sequence they were cloned? if so are the ones that don't work grouped together in some way or all after a specific date/time? That could show an issue with either the master or the cloning process.

we have our master machine which has a basic setup for windows and stuff. We then take the disk image from that single machine and clone it onto all of the other laptops. We then install software for a particular user based on their needs. Our spare's are based on simply the master, I don't believe they have anything more than office installed.

But we even went through the setup imagining we were deploying one of the spares to a particular user, and it never encountered the problem. so we know it's not the software on the machine interfering.

I personally want to blame the driver's as well, but even reinstalling the driver's on the affected machines produces no different results.

 

And I would say it would be a hardware problem but it literally ONLY happens when we deploy to a user. every single one of the 4 laptops at a user's desk that we have deployed is currently NOT WORKING. meanwhile all of our spares are perfectly fine... even after setting them up for a "user" like I explained earlier. We've even tried swapping docks themselves to a known working dock on the user's machines... to no avail.

 

It's a really stupid problem, I just don't get it... and i feel like it could be a networking problem but I'm just an intern so I really do not know the entire setup. The only reason I know we don't have a VLAN thing going on because one of my co-workers who is in charge of networking was complaining the other day "gosh I hope they don't make put VLAN's everywhere for all of the different offices"

[GOTSpectrum]

6 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

We've tried this. This is how we know it is machine-specific and not dock-specifc.

we have our master machine which has a basic setup for windows and stuff. We then take the disk image from that single machine and clone it onto all of the other laptops. We then install software for a particular user based on their needs. Our spare's are based on simply the master, I don't believe they have anything more than office installed.

But we even went through the setup imagining we were deploying one of the spares to a particular user, and it never encountered the problem. so we know it's not the software on the machine interfering.

I personally want to blame the driver's as well, but even reinstalling the driver's on the affected machines produces no different results.

 

And I would say it would be a hardware problem but it literally ONLY happens when we deploy to a user. every single one of the 4 laptops at a user's desk that we have deployed is currently NOT WORKING. meanwhile all of our spares are perfectly fine... even after setting them up for a "user" like I explained earlier. We've even tried swapping docks themselves to a known working dock on the user's machines... to no avail.

 

It's a really stupid problem, I just don't get it... and i feel like it could be a networking problem but I'm just an intern so I really do not know the entire setup. The only reason I know we don't have a VLAN thing going on because one of my co-workers who is in charge of networking was complaining the other day "gosh I hope they don't make put VLAN's everywhere for all of the different offices"

Just so I know I have this right, the machines work perfectly fine before it is 'Personalised' for the user with the software they need? Do these users have specific software requirements that are different from the rest of the users? If not you could try setting up a new test user with an identical setup as one of the faulty user set-ups and see if it is persistent across to a new user account then you know it is a issue with the particular setup environment and can be replicated. Think of it as a control in an experiment. 

[bcredeur97]

Just now, Ben Quigley said:

Just so I know I have this right, the machines work perfectly fine before it is 'Personalised' for the user with the software they need? Do these users have specific software requirements that are different from the rest of the users? If not you could try setting up a new test user with an identical setup as one of the faulty user set-ups and see if it is persistent across to a new user account then you know it is a issue with the particular setup environment and can be replicated. Think of it as a control in an experiment. 

that's what I meant by "we setup a test machine as if it were an "imaginary" user (though it was actually one of our users that had all of the specific software requirements... we duplicated it down to all of their needs, even the windows password, and the dock continued to work despite our efforts)

 

So I want to say the issue only occurs in their office and the problem is the networking setup for their office. There's a missing piece to this puzzle that I don't know.

 

I want to bring one of the test/spare machines and a dock into their office and see what happens... I'm trying to work on that now. Kind of hard to make things happen as an intern though.

[GOTSpectrum]

Just now, bcredeur97 said:

that's what I meant by "we setup a test machine as if it were an "imaginary" user (though it was actually one of our users that had all of the specific software requirements... we duplicated it down to all of their needs, even the windows password, and the dock continued to work despite our efforts)

 

So I want to say the issue only occurs in their office and the problem is the networking setup for their office. There's a missing piece to this puzzle that I don't know.

 

I want to bring one of the test/spare machines and a dock into their office and see what happens... I'm trying to work on that now. Kind of hard to make things happen as an intern though.

When I said to do the test I meant in the environment where the issues are occurring, for example in their office, sorry I wasn't clear there. So exactly what you did with the test but at the deployed location. That way you will hopefully be able to narrow down the issue. Also I presume you have full documentation for the network setup like layout diagrams and technical details of the exact deployment? maybe compare the two(working environment vs faulty) you could find your answer there. 

[bcredeur97]

22 hours ago, Ben Quigley said:

When I said to do the test I meant in the environment where the issues are occurring, for example in their office, sorry I wasn't clear there. So exactly what you did with the test but at the deployed location. That way you will hopefully be able to narrow down the issue. Also I presume you have full documentation for the network setup like layout diagrams and technical details of the exact deployment? maybe compare the two(working environment vs faulty) you could find your answer there. 

Ok well I was just able to bring a spare machine setup for a "user" into one of the user's offices that was having the problem... plugged the network cable into their dock and plugged the dock into the spare machine... and it worked just fine..

 

Plugged that same exact dock setup into their computer and..... no WINS server address. And netBIOS disabled. could not connect to an existing or map a new network drive.

.... I just don't get it.

 

No I don't have access to that documentation. But really the network is clearly not the issue. It's the machines. yet it's not the machines... I'm so puzzled..
 

Our last hope for today is the user we have to deploy. I will make completely sure the dock is working when I bring the machine into their office before AND every single step of setting the machine up for them. (copying their files over, installing misc software and whatever else we have to do..)

[dalekphalm]

4 hours ago, bcredeur97 said:

Ok well I was just able to bring a spare machine setup for a "user" into one of the user's offices that was having the problem... plugged the network cable into their dock and plugged the dock into the spare machine... and it worked just fine..

 

Plugged that same exact dock setup into their computer and..... no WINS server address. And netBIOS disabled. could not connect to an existing or map a new network drive.

.... I just don't get it.

 

and no of course not, why would I have that? they most likely barely have documentation on that themselves(lol). But really the network is clearly not the issue. It's the machines. yet it's not the machines... I'm so puzzled..
 

Our last hope for today is the user we have to deploy. I will make completely sure the dock is working when I bring the machine into their office before AND every single step of setting the machine up for them. (copying their files over, installing misc software and whatever else we have to do..)

What happens if you take that users machine and brought it and the dock back to the IT office and tested the entire end-user setup back there?

[bcredeur97]

1 minute ago, dalekphalm said:

What happens if you take that users machine and brought it and the dock back to the IT office and tested the entire end-user setup back there?

it remains the same. doesn't fix the problem.

 

 

I have semi-good news. The machine we were supposed to deliver today; we decided to double check and make sure the dock was working in the IT office before we brought it to the user's desk, and to our surprise it didn't work!

So we cancelled the appointment and are now trying to figure out the problem with this "bad" machine.

First we gathered a list of all installed software, and im using one of the spare PC's(which works) to duplicate her PC onto it, installing each missing piece of software one by one to see what the problem is. The only thing that should be different between the two though is the installed software... everything else is the same. So if this doesn't work im not really sure what to try next We could of course give her the spare instead of the machine she was supposed to get but that isn't ideal is it? still doesn't solve the root problem.

[dalekphalm]

2 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

it remains the same. doesn't fix the problem.

 

 

I have semi-good news. The machine we were supposed to deliver today; we decided to double check and make sure the dock was working in the IT office before we brought it to the user's desk, and to our surprise it didn't work!

So we cancelled the appointment and are now trying to figure out the problem with this "bad" machine.

First we gathered a list of all installed software, and im using one of the spare PC's(which works) to duplicate her PC onto it, installing each missing piece of software one by one to see what the problem is. The only thing that should be different between the two though is the installed software... everything else is the same. So if this doesn't work im not really sure what to try next We could of course give her the spare instead of the machine she was supposed to get but that isn't ideal is it? still doesn't solve the root problem.

Yep doing a step-by-step check is the way to do it.

 

Very time consuming, but literally anytime you make a change, you should check to see if the dock still works, until you find out it doesn't work.

 

Then get another spare and test to see if it's reproducible.

 

Can you find a general list of what networking equipment is in your network? On the network side, a really fucked up Firewall ACL (Access Control List) might cause issues, flagging certain computers and blocking them, vs letting others go.

 

VLAN's could be an issue, but this should be consistent (Eg: if it works in the IT Office, it should always work in the IT Office).

 

Are these computers all using DHCP? If so, what is the DHCP Server? Is it a hardware device (Router, layer 3 switch, etc), or a Windows/Linux Server? Are there multiple subnets (Eg: 192.168.1.x + 192.168.2.x) or is everyone on the same IP range (Eg: 192.168.1.x)?

[bcredeur97]

17 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Yep doing a step-by-step check is the way to do it.

 

Very time consuming, but literally anytime you make a change, you should check to see if the dock still works, until you find out it doesn't work.

 

Then get another spare and test to see if it's reproducible.

 

Can you find a general list of what networking equipment is in your network? On the network side, a really fucked up Firewall ACL (Access Control List) might cause issues, flagging certain computers and blocking them, vs letting others go.

 

VLAN's could be an issue, but this should be consistent (Eg: if it works in the IT Office, it should always work in the IT Office).

 

Are these computers all using DHCP? If so, what is the DHCP Server? Is it a hardware device (Router, layer 3 switch, etc), or a Windows/Linux Server? Are there multiple subnets (Eg: 192.168.1.x + 192.168.2.x) or is everyone on the same IP range (Eg: 192.168.1.x)?

Welp... so I've gone through the entire list of things different between the two PC's and installed one piece of software at a time to the spare to match the "broken" pc... yet the dock is still working.

-______-

 

All I know for sure what we have is "Avaya 4000 series" switches. But the network admin confirmed that the network should not be an issue, it's all the same everywhere. And the situation at my desk right now that we have with one laptop working but the other not working confirms that.

 

Yes we are using DHCP, no idea what device is handling DHCP. There are multiple subnets. All of the user PC's however, are on the same subnet.

[bcredeur97]

I've confirmed the following on both working and non-working devices:
 

Quote

1. The working devices have 3 "Dell giga ethernet" devices listed, two hidden, one showing up when plugged into the dock. If you unplug the dock, the one that is showing goes hidden.
    - On the contrary, the non-working devices have only 1 device listed. and it always shows whether the dock is plugged in or not.

2. MAC addresses -- we noticed the MAC addressing is different on different laptops, even if those devices are plugged into the same dock. (i.e. 3 different laptops will each have their own unique MAC address when you plug them into the same exact dock).

 

3. the working devices have the dock show up as "Ethernet 4" whereas the non-working devices have the dock show up as "Ethernet 2"

 

that's all we really have for now. Let me know if anyone has an idea...

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, bcredeur97 said:

I've confirmed the following on both working and non-working devices:
 

that's all we really have for now. Let me know if anyone has an idea...

Definitely sounds like a hardware or driver problem. I'm leaning more towards a driver issue.

 

On the laptops where the extra NIC's are missing, can you try plugging the dock in, and scan for hardware changes inside the Device Manager?

[bcredeur97]

30 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Definitely sounds like a hardware or driver problem. I'm leaning more towards a driver issue.

 

On the laptops where the extra NIC's are missing, can you try plugging the dock in, and scan for hardware changes inside the Device Manager?

Just tried. Nothing happens.

[wildcardNP]

I've been dealing with this for 2 months now, did you ever find a solve?

 

D6000 docks, E5580 and 5580 laptops. IPC$/Admin$/C$ connections fail but only on dock. Destroys many of our remote management processes. All machines on D6000s were affected; I bought another D6000 to test, and it works on my desk, but doesn't work if I move it to a user's office (nor does the user's D6000 work on my bench). Same image and OU/group membership, same SCCM collections. In theory the software/firmware stacks should be identical. In between all tests, DNS was flushed on both machines, DHCP leases for both machines were cleared, and DNS entries in AD were cleared for both machines.

 

I thought it was NBT too, but IP fails respectively with hostnames. I thought it was hardware, but I have a single D6000 that has worked on my desk but won't work anywhere else and the other IT teams can't replicate my working test. I thought it was software, but I've tried every possible revision of the dock FW and driver. I thought it was Windows, but I've tried 7SP2, 1607-1803. I have literally done ~200 tests changing one thing at a time.

 

Some people report this issue with WD15 docks, but all of my WD15 docks work fine, same driver as D6000. My brain hurts.

[bcredeur97]

47 minutes ago, wildcardNP said:

I've been dealing with this for 2 months now, did you ever find a solve?

 

D6000 docks, E5580 and 5580 laptops. IPC$/Admin$/C$ connections fail but only on dock. Destroys many of our remote management processes. All machines on D6000s were affected; I bought another D6000 to test, and it works on my desk, but doesn't work if I move it to a user's office (nor does the user's D6000 work on my bench). Same image and OU/group membership, same SCCM collections. In theory the software/firmware stacks should be identical. In between all tests, DNS was flushed on both machines, DHCP leases for both machines were cleared, and DNS entries in AD were cleared for both machines.

 

I thought it was NBT too, but IP fails respectively with hostnames. I thought it was hardware, but I have a single D6000 that has worked on my desk but won't work anywhere else and the other IT teams can't replicate my working test. I thought it was software, but I've tried every possible revision of the dock FW and driver. I thought it was Windows, but I've tried 7SP2, 1607-1803. I have literally done ~200 tests changing one thing at a time.

 

Some people report this issue with WD15 docks, but all of my WD15 docks work fine, same driver as D6000. My brain hurts.

we never really solved it... just drivers updates came, we kept trying them. eventually it all just started working and we didn't have problems since.

 

I think we had gotten drivers from DisplayLink themselves instead of Dell, and that worked.

 

I think we also had to reinstall windows before it started working on the affected clients.. i.e. once broken, it stays broken.