ARGH!! why does my samba server lose domain master elections??

[Jeff Wiegley]

Subject pretty much says it all.

(And *please* don't point me BROWSING.txt since I've been there done
that and it still doesn't work)

First let me vent...
  What a shit microsoft is for doing the following...
   creating a browsing protocol where the WINS server is dynamically
   elected from a possibly infinite set of machines; yet you need to
   hard code a static address in the clients.  How the hell are you
   to ever be sure that the static IP address you "guessed" is the
   one for the server that happened to win and not just some loser
   machine.

Now for my problem:
  I have a samba machine which has the following WINS settings...

     domain master = yes
     local master = yes
     os level = 255
     preferred master = yes
     wins support = yes

  now, even though I have the os level set to a hideously high setting
  which should beat everything out there I still keep getting beaten
  by WinNT machines that are on my net.

  So everynow and then my users come to me and say... "I can't seem to
  see all the machines I should in the Network Neighborhood; why is that?"

  and of course I send a HUP to nmbd and check the log.nmb file and
  sure enough some WinNT box came up, forced an election and won.

  I thought an os level of 255 would beat *everything* out there so
  why are NT machines still capable of becoming the domain master
  browser???  The WinNT installations are just simple typical installations.

Thanks for any help you can offer,

- Jeff Wiegley