Samba 3.4.7 on CentOS 5.4 (although I saw the same behaviour with earlier versions of both). Samba is set to be the PDC and master browser, and we have bumped the os level up to its maximum: workgroup = WORKGROUP netbios name = LINUX os level = 255 preferred master = Yes local master = Yes domain master = Yes browse list = Yes enhanced browsing = Yes wins proxy = No wins support = Yes Periodically, however, some Windows laptop comes onto our network and steals Local Master from the Samba server. Then, when the laptop is removed, no further browser elections occur. I can force an election with "smbcontrol nmbd force-election", which the server wins (no pun intended), but isn't that supposed to happen automatically if the previous master disappears? Any ideas why a server with those settings would lose Local Master, or fail to regain it when the other machine becomes unavailable? Moray. "To err is human.? To purr, feline"