Netbios

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What is Netbios for? Could I disable it if I wanted to without impacting my solo non-networked system?

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NetBIOS is an older, “noisy” network protocol. If you’re standalone, I would definitely disable it. Even in a networked situation, NetBIOS offers little in the way of advantages, but alone….it offers none.

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Do you mean NetBIOS or NetBEUI?

Microsoft NetBEUI is a network protocol, which you definitely won’t need on a standalone PC. You add and remove it in the same way as other network protocols such as TCP/IP.

NetBIOS is an API that some software uses to communicate with the network. It was originally used with NetBEUI but can also be used with TCP/IP (TCP/IP Properties > NetBIOS > “I want to enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP”). You probably don’t need this either!

StuartR

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I meant NetBios. I’m running WIn2K Pro SP3. I tired to stop the running NetBios service so I could then disable it. But the system won’t allow me to do this (I was not logged on at the time and just did a reboot).

This is the driver file:
System32DRIVERSnetbios.sys

This is the message I get:
Service refused to stop
Error code is 997, “Overlapped I/O operation is in progress.”

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Strange, I just checked on my W2K SP2 Server and I don’t have a NETBIOS service, even though I have NETBIOS enabled in TCP/IP Properties > Advanced.

StuartR

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Edited by WyllyWylly to add URL code. See the Quick Guide.[/size]

Well, it’s not exactly a service, it’s a kernal device. You can use the free SVRADMIN program available at the link below to see more than just simple services that are running on your system:

http://www.hhdsoftware.com/srvadmin.html%5B/url%5D

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