Decommission WINS Servers

Once clients are configured to use DNS rather than WINS for name service, you can decommission individual WINS servers.

Use the WINS management console to mark all records as released for the owner server that you are decommissioning. This tombstone status information is then passed to other WINS servers on your network during the next replication, when they update their local database copies of these records.

Once the records for this server are tombstoned on the other WINS servers on your network, they are automatically removed from other WINS server databases when they have aged to the point of extinction.

To decommission the server, click Start, point to Programs and then to Administrative Tools, and then click WINS. If the WINS server you want to decommission does not appear in the console tree, you can add it.

In the console tree, click the WINS server you want to decommission, and then click Active Registrations. On the Action menu, click Delete Owner. In Delete Owner, for Delete this owner, click the IP address for the WINS server you want to decommission. If the WINS server is not running locally on this computer, it might take a while to load the records for the selected server.

For Use this operation to delete the selected owner and its records, click Replicate deletion to other WINS servers (tombstone), and then click OK. When prompted to confirm tombstoning, click Yes.

In the console tree, click Replication Partners. On the Action menu, click Replicate Now. Once you have verified that records tombstoned in the previous step have been replicated to other partner servers, stop and remove WINS on the decommissioned server.

Important

Before decommissioning a WINS server, make sure that any computers previously configured as WINS clients of this server are reconfigured to use other servers as their primary or secondary WINS servers. Reconfiguration is necessary only if these clients will use WINS to register and resolve network names.

Tombstoning ensures that the WINS servers that are replication partners with the decommissioned WINS server are updated properly so that they release the records. If tombstone status is not properly replicated, you can manually delete the records at each WINS server on which tombstone replication failed.

WINS supports remote record deletion for servers running Windows NT Server 4.0, if updated to Service Pack 4 (SP4) or later.

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