document updated 13 years ago, on Apr 5, 2011

note: text highlighted like this are Windows command-lines
and text highlighted like this are Unix comand-lines

There are two ways of looking up WINS names: from a WINS server, or from local broadcast.

When on a corporate LAN environment (using a domain controller, etc), this is how to get the IP address for a given WINS name.

nmblookup -S -R -U <WINS_server_IP> <WINS_name>

To do the same thing in Windows requires you to download the separate nblookup.exe tool.

WINS_name is the computer that you're trying to get the IP address for.

WINS_server_ip is the IP address of the WINS server. You can get this by running ipconfig /all | findstr "WINS" on a Windows computer.

To do WINS resolution, using local LAN broadcast, instead of Active Directory, do this:

nmblookup -S -R <WINS_name>

nbtstat -a <WINS_name>