WINS 1C Records Become Tombstoned and Are Scavenged out of Database

In an environment that relies on Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) to resolve NetBIOS names, Windows clients can experience logon problems and the following error message will appear: The WINS [1C] domain records may be missing from some WINS server databases.

Through replication and convergence, the [1C] record ownership will change from WINS server to WINS server. Eventually, you may many end up with a scenario where a WINS server that owns a [1C] record and its direct replication partner has a replica of the [1C] record but does not own the record. The problem occurs when no domain controllers refresh the [1C] record on the remote WINS server, the records will expire, become tombstoned, and be scavenged out of the database. The following is an example of what could happen:

1. The version ID for the tombstoned [1C] record will be increased and will be flagged for replication during the next replication cycle.
2. WINS cannot increment the version ID of a replica record (record owned by another WINS server); only the owner of a record is allowed to increment the version ID of the record. When replication occurs the tombstoned [1C] record will not be replicated to its replication partner if the partner does not own the [1C] record.
3. The tombstoned [1C] Record will then be scavenged out of the database.

In the case of pull-only replication, the servers that are only pulling records should not have ownership of any of the [1C] records as no servers should be refreshing or registering with the servers.

A change has been made to WINS so that, if a [1C] record should become tombstoned on a WINS server, ownership will change to that of the tombstoning WINS server. The tombstoned [1C] record will continue to replicate to all replication partners as tombstoned with the ownership being set to that of the tombstoning server. When an active [1C] record is encountered, the ownership of the [1C] record will be changed to that of the WINS server that owns the active [1C] record and will then be replicated as active to all replication partners.

There was also an additional change made to Wins.exe where a WINS server will send a Push with Propagation trigger when the tombstoned [1C] record is encountered. The Push with Propagation trigger will propagate the trigger to all replication partners after it has pulled in the latest information from the source WINS server. This will ensure that the tombstoned [1C] record is replaced with and active [1C] record expediently if there is truly and active owner of the [1C] record in the replication network. To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Windows NT 4.0. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

This hotfix supercedes all hotfixes referenced in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Windows NT 4.0.