David, I had the exact problem - it turned out to be my DNS entries. I had one in house DNS server defined and one external DNS server defined in DHCP. For some reason the Windows 2000 and XP clients would query the external server before the local server.

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It also happens if your local computer is loosing it's connection to the master browser. Grab BROWMON.exe from MS resource kit, then when the connection turns red, try getting into network neigborhood. It will fail, as soon as the connection turns yellow or blue, you can click through. It seems odd, that many of us are seeing this on Windows 2000. I'm still trying to track down the problem. If anyone else has success please post it here. Additionally, if you are running Trends Officescan product, there is a known problem and a patch available to fix a problem similar to this

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John, Who has the patch for Trend's Officescan. I have searched Trend and Microsoft but have had no luck.

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I just downloaded and installed the Officescan patch and it fixed the problem on my win2k pros. The patch is included in scan engine 6.120 which has not been released yet. This is nothing on Trends site about this problem. If you need the patch send me email and I will forward to you.

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We've been having many similar problems. NT clients have been unable to browse the domain (or even login to the domain) and those outside our domain can't see our domain. We spent a week trying to figure this one out. For us it turns out that somehow HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\RestrictAnonymous has been set to 2 (we don't remember doing this ourselves). This is commonly recommended in many security guides to prevent non-authenticated users from obtaining lots of info about your domain...however they don't tell you that it breaks nearly all browser functions on non-Win2K systems that connect to your Win2k domain. Setting it back to 0 fixed everything after a reboot. See MS KB article Q246261 at support.microsoft.com For those who see this problem intermittently, it's likely that only some of your servers that are acting as backup browsers have this setting in place. Since clients randomly chose a backup browser to make the query to, it is likely that sometimes it gets one that allow it and works and sometimes it gets one that doesn't and fails. To find out which machines are acting as backup browsers: browstat list 1 \\SERVER |findstr /i bbr Browstat is from the NT/2000 resource kit. The 1 may be different on your machine...it corresponds to the first transport. Type "browstat status DOMAINNAME" to see all your active transports. \\SERVER should be the name of the server on your net that is acting as PDC and/or Master Browser.

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I have the exact same problem running a multi-homed 2000 server with xppro, 2kpro, and samba on the network. but I see that I only get the error on my user account (that has admin privleges)if I use any other account including accounts with minimal privs or the admin account I can browse the network fine. any idea's would be most appreciated!! Thanks

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The problem is with OUTLOOK. I have tried 2 versions of outlook ( 2000 & XP) on a (fresh load) Win2k Machine and both create the same problem. If you exit OUTLOOK for a while, the connection is re-established. Its Error code 1230 on Error_connection_active but thats as far as you get with microsoft. No clue how to fix it

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I get the same problem :( i am running windows 2000 server as a domain controller (active directory). i have dhcp, dns and wins enabled. the wins server ip address is given to clients by dhcp (static ip address of the domain controller). my client computer is windows XP... i can browse the network fine for a while (10 to 15 minutes), then the "An invalid operation was attempted on an active network connection" error appears. i am still able to browse the network if i log into the server machine (that can always browse 100% of the time). i have set the RestrictAnonymous registry value to 1. when the error appears i can still access the shares of the server by typing the network computer name in the address bar \\server is this a problem with DNS service? grrr i think im going mad! it seems to happen more when i access mp3 files on the server and play them. sometimes after doing that i get the same old error appear. any help much appreciated

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I also have this problem, and quitting outlook (XP) resolved the problem. The network is a test bed, 5 2K servers with 3 domains, 1 2K pro client. I thought perhaps that the problem was name resolution, as I'm internet connected and running a registered domain, but the Outlook thing sorts it out right away. Unfortunately, I as yet have no idea why! Will post if I find anything.

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its not outlook, its not even installed :( it seems to do it more when an application access files over the network. i have dns running but the install is default, i have not changed any settings. am i right in thinking i need to configure it properly (im still reading my win2k server complete book hehe... getting through it slowly). i dont think reverse lookup is running. i only have one server, so the global catalog is on the server also. will this casue problems? do i have to use two servers, or is that simply to take the strain of the main server? also havent changed any settings in active directory... do i need to add to the sites (the subnet and ip i think)? cheers, Chris

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This might help everyone. Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q318332 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q318332

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