samba - Oct 2000 - WINS clients not showing in browse list

I have three subnets of windows clients (three or four each of
NT4 and 2000, one 98). They all operate in workgroup mode, and
I've recently enabled the only server in the whole setup (Samba
2.0.7) to be a WINS server (wins support = yes). All the clients
have added the server IP to their network configuration as the
WINS server, and they all can see the other machines that are
listed in samba's browse.dat file.

The problem is, two machines aren't being added to the browse.dat
file. They do appear in the wins.dat file, which just seems to be
a list of machines that have accessed WINS.

The first machine is the 98 one... file and printer sharing are
turned on, and are working. I can access it (from the samba
server) with smbclient -L win-98-machine-name just fine. It
doesn't show up in browse.dat (and apperantly therefore, anyone's
network neighboorhood).

The second machine is in a bit more complicated situation, so
perhaps someone who knows more about WINS can advise. The second
machine is one of the Windows 2000 machines. It is the only
machine on its subnet, which is VPNing into our main offices. It
can access other machines manually by typing in their name, but
it only sees itself in network neighborhood. Once, it was able to
see the browse list, but when i restarted smbd/nmbd, it couldnt
anymore. I hadn't made any changes went it went from cant-see to
can-see. The aforementioned complicated situation this machine is
in is as follows:

Although the machine is the only one from our company (and
workgroup) on that subnet, there are 30 other machines in a
seperate windows domain on the same subnet. I'm thinking that the
NT4.0 Server located there is serving information to the machine,
telling it, "never heard of that workgroup, and im the master
browser who knows all and sees all, so heres a browse list
containing just yourself". I will eventually try puting that
machine in a seperate subnet and see if that fixes that problem,
but this is undesired if it is possible to get working without.
Even with a WINS server set, it seems windows machines still
storm a network with broadcasts looking to find friends =/.

I can barely stand using this protocol, I dont know how the samba
folks find enjoyment out of writing an implementation! =).

TIA.

-Jeremy M. Dolan

Well, to answer my own question, after a recommendation from a
friend, I renamed the win98 machine and sure enough, the new name
shows up in nethood. Name it back to the old name, still shows
up. Interesting, this operating system. Still wondering about the
win2000 situation.

On a side note, I'm wondering how long a client stays in
browse.dat? During my testing, I brought up samba on my linux
workstation, since it's on the same subnet as the 98 machine. It
was added to browse.dat after a few mins. But smbd/nmbd have been
down for quite a while, yet it remains in the list.

TIA, unless I answer myself first, again =)

-Jeremy M. Dolan