Archive-name: windows/win95/faq Last-Modified: 1998/11/08 Posting-Frequency: Every two months URL: http://www.orca.bc.ca/win95/faq1.htm Subject: 1. Administrivia, copyrights, etc * 1.1. What are FAQs? * 1.2. What is Windows 95? * 1.3. Why did you write this FAQ about Windows 95? + 1.3.1. Why did you cross-post this FAQ to all the .win95 newsgroups? + 1.3.2. Why do you have all the Win95 groups in the Followup-to line? * 1.4. Whose work did you include in this FAQ besides yours? * 1.5. What other FAQs are out there? * 1.6. What other resources are out there? * 1.7. Whose trademarks did you use? * 1.8. What restrictions do you put on usage of this FAQ? + 1.8.1. Disclaimers ------------------------------ Subject: 1.1. What are FAQs? FAQs are Frequently Asked Questions. FAQs minimize traffic on Usenet by providing answers to common questions, before users post those questions on newsgroups. If people knew about FAQs and used them, we wouldn't need ridiculous high speed links just to distribute Usenet news. Read the FAQs when available. Save copies. Give copies to your friends. Read all about FAQs and get others from the FAQ archives at rtfm.mit.edu and their mirror sites. ------------------------------ Subject: 1.2. What is Windows 95? Microsoft's newest "low end" operating system for Intel based computers. In my opinion, they designed it to wean DOS users off that 20 year old operating system and into some current stuff. It replaces DOS and previous versions of Windows entirely. In addition to completely re-working the user interface, Win95 brings over large amounts of Windows NT technology, allowing app writers to write for both operating systems. One of Microsoft's requirements for Designed for Windows 95 products is that the product must also run on Windows NT Workstation. It also (supposedly) helps you manage your hardware, your software, your time, etc better. It's also supposed to make you rich, good looking, sexually irresistible, and permanently wonderful. heh heh... ------------------------------ Subject: 1.3. Why did you write this FAQ about Windows 95? The traffic on comp.os.ms-windows.win95.misc is ridiculous. Other Win95 FAQs I read were too sparse, too technical, too anti-Microsoft, or otherwise too un-useful for the common folk. Also, Microsoft's FAQ, which shipped with the CD-ROM version, was pathetic. But ultimately, I wrote it for the experience, so I can say, "Hey, I made a Web page!" I hope this page is useful to you out there. This FAQ tries to get the big questions answered while going into some technical detail for those who want to learn more. Where content goes beyond the scope of this FAQ, I link you to appropriate sites. * 1.3.1. Why did you cross-post this FAQ to all the .win95 newsgroups? Because I was asked to. One of the initial letters I received in response to the FAQ was to have me post it in the FAQ archives for news.answers, so non-WWW people could use it. And not everyone has FTP either; people using the Vancouver CommunityNet have no FTP access at all! To get in the archives I had to actually post it to, not only news.answers and comp.answers, but the groups directly concerned with the questions in the FAQ. I wouldn't have received approval from rtfm.mit.edu to cross-post if I wasn't supposed to. Cross-posting also takes less disk space on news servers than multi-posting. In a cross-posted article you have only one message ID (and only one file). Cross-posting the FAQ to the groups in question, as well to news.answers, takes the same bandwidth as a single posting to news.answers would. * 1.3.2. Why did you include all the .win95 groups in the Followup-to header? Originally, the .answers moderators' FAQ checker would reject the FAQ if it didn't include a followup-to line containing all the groups in question. I've started using only the .win95.misc group as it seems a better place for folow-ups to the FAQ itself. Yes, I've started reading .win95.misc to look for FAQ followups. ------------------------------ Subject: 1.4. Whose work did you include in this FAQ besides yours? These people: * Rich Graves: He runs the win95netbugs FAQ. He has excellent tech information but is very anti-Microsoft. He heeds help; he can't maintain the netbugs FAQ, so if you think you can do it, ask him. * Jim Farewell: My ex-boss, who allowed me all the resource material from Microsoft he had, and his computers. If it wasn't for this guy's patience and resources, the FAQ wouldn't be so comprehensive. * Creative Element: They run the Win95 annoyances FAQ, and they have plenty of brute-force methods for making Win95 work the way THEY want it to work. * Richard Evans: Who lent me his web server space to allow you all to preview this FAQ. * Glen Ninow: He runs The InterNet Store (With special emphasis on the capital 'N' in 'InterNet') and graciously offered his web server space to me for the permanent home of this FAQ, and his computers for me to bash after Jim Farewell handed me my pink slip. :p * Ben Goetter: He is writing a book on writing MAPI applications for MS Exchange, and has an excellent Exchange FAQ. * Sue Mosher: Excellent work keeping us updated on the Windows Messaging updates. * William Hartley: He prepared a .HLP version of this FAQ * Sean Erwin: He maintains the OSR2 FAQ. And then there are those who gave suggestions since the first release... sorry it took so long guys: * Eric Gisin for many corrections and a hack to MS's TCP/IP Properties sheet to let you make adjustments without Registry hacking, and for the Emergency Recovery Disk suggestions. Visit his new Registry site at http://www.webhaven.com/ericg/Windows/Registry.html * Ed Babin for some tape backup corrections * Michael Thomas and too many others not listed here, for encouragement * Kurt C. Joseph for the advice in running Win 3.1 within Win95 * Jack H. Pincus for the good news regarding Corel's version of WordPerfect for Win95 * William Hunt (E-MAIL address unknown) for the RNAAPP lockup fix and Eric Mitchell for telling me that it DIDN'T work * Eric again for the Documents Menu clean-up program, from MS Power Toys * Jeff Lawson for the Modem Break script to get SLiRP working with Win95 dial-up networking * Gordon McAndrew for the pioneering work into making TAPI work over packet radio * Anthony Humphreys for the nice package of MS Exchange add-ons, and FAQ page 10 corrections * Cassell for spelling corrections * "S. Dawson" for pioneering work into Banyan's VINES client for Win95 * Alan R. Miller for corrections in FAQ page 9 * Demetrio Lamzaki for encouragement in the face of OS/2 religious fanatics * Daniel Bourdon for the Rendering Subsystem/MS Fax clairification * perin@onyx.interactive.net for making a BOOTP client for Win95 * Many others for telling me about the WinWord 7.0a / MS Fax mail merge bugfix * S. T. Brown for nominating this FAQ answer as the funniest quote in the FAQ. Go to the bottom of section 3.1 to find the line. * Several users: for SUBST.EXE clairification * Mr. Harigan for telling me about IMAP4, MHS, and Newsgroup clients for Exchange (Search for ExpressIT! 2000 on the WWW) * Volker Hejny for adventures in DriveSpace 3 :-) and some clairifications * Dwight Jones for telling me about changing MAC addresses in the dial-up adapter * Breidavik Gistiheimili for VCPI information: Games that need VCPI services won't run in a Win95 DOS session * John English for publishing this and many many other FAQs on their Student Info CD-ROM from the University of Brighton, in the UK (And for giving me a copy) * Vincent Hsieh for translating the FAQ to Chinese (I don't have the URL; somebody PLEASE give it to me) * Jeremy Parkinson for alerting me to the missing Alias Monitor file from HP's web site (Another reason to keep HP on my Lamers page) * Witalka, Jerome JRV for pointing out more errors in FAQ page 9 * COPStalk info; finally, a Designed for Win95 AppleTalk client * Serg V. Shubenkov for mirroring my site in Moscow! * Jon Jacobik for the ultimate Win95 FAQ question: "How do you get Microsoft's attention to a problem like this?" (Answer: Return your copy of Win95 and phone MS Tech support asking for your registration card back!) * Oliver Knorr for experience in making User Profiles work on a non-centralized network * Howard Harkness for more Corel WP 7.0 lameness reports... I expected better from Corel. * The brave souls who harassed anyone who gave me sh*t for cross-posting the FAQ. I got a couple of nasty responses but I never heard from then ever again... heh heh heh... Perfect example of how The Net polices itself ------------------------------ Subject: 1.5. What other FAQs are out there? Too many... use them. Win95 Net Bugs: Win95 Annoyances The one on the Win95 CD-ROM even though it sucks now Ben Goetter's Exchange FAQ: Sue Mosher's Exchange/Windows Messaging FAQ: There's an excellent Win95 Usage FAQ at The OSR2 FAQ lives at ------------------------------ Subject: 1.6. What other resources are out there? There's Microsoft's Windows 95 Resource Kit which makes a great start. Definitely check out the Microsoft Knowledge Base, (http://www.microsoft.com/kb/) which has a lot of stuff who you might've thought only Technet users had access too. They recently re-did their search engine, so you can search on phrases like "Confirmed bugs" or "Bugs fixed", or "Files available for download". This stuff is right to the point. If you don't use Internet Explorer, visit http://www.microsoft.com/kb/softlib/ for a non-IE-viewable page of software. MS's regular Win95 pages have a bunch of tags that NCSA Mosaic barfs on. www.windows95.com keeps a well updated library of software. Search engine searches will give other sites of course. I won't recommend any magazines as of yet, because they're all full of MS ads and other un-productive junk. ------------------------------ Subject: 1.7. Whose trademarks did you use? Windows, MS-DOS, MS Exchange, MS Plus, Internet Explorer, DriveSpace: Microsoft Corp NT: Northern Telecom (Go figure) Norton Utilities, Norton Anti-Virus, Norton Navigator, etc: Symantec Corp Colorado Backup: Hewlett-Packard Corp Macintosh, AppleTalk: Apple Computer Inc Pentium, Pentium Pro: Intel Corp Netscape Navigator and Communicator: Netscape Communications Inc LANtastic: Artisoft Corp Disk Manager: Ontrack Systems DrivePro: Microhouse Stacker: Stack Electronics OS/2: IBM Corp TCPMAN: Trumpet Communications NetWare, MHS: Novell, Inc CleanSweep 95, QEMM: Quarterdeck SoftRAM: Synchronys Software (Evil, evil, evil, evil...) Award BIOS: Award software MR BIOS: Microid Research Sound Blaster (whatever kind), AWE32: Creative Labs Graphics Ultra/Pro/Expression: ATI WinCIM: CompuServe Inc WinFax: Delrina Communications/Symantec ------------------------------ Subject: 1.8. What restrictions do you put on the use of this FAQ? Distribution and mirroring are encouraged so long as the source is quoted, and it's distributed in full. (Unfortunately I can't control broken news gateways that won't distribute the FAQ pages... sorry). Translation to other languages and other formats is encouraged provided the intended content remains the same. People asked me about removing the "editorial comments" I scatter through the FAQ. I prefer you don't, but I won't mind. If you do this, please let me know so I can inspect it and make sure the answers are still accurate. * 1.8.1. Disclaimers: As MS fixes the bugs and as vendors come up with new products, this info may be in-accurate. Check with other sources (like the references above) if you are in doubt of any info I have here. I would appreciate updates and comments and you will receive recognition for your work. The opinions in this FAQ are mine, except where directly quoted and linked from. They do not reflect the opinions of my employer or the provider of this web space. Especially as I often argue with both of them about these topics. I can't be responsible for any damage this information causes you or your equipment. Try to avoid using REGEDIT. RTFM. RTFFAQ. Ask Questions. But don't come crying to me or sic your lawyers on me if you broke your computer. I can't fix it. Subject: 2. Installing Windows 95 * 2.1. Basics about Win95 vs Win 3.x and DOS + 2.1.1. Basics about OEM Service Release 2 vs original Win95, Win 3.x, and DOS * 2.2. How do I install Win95 on a computer with... + 2.2.1. ...nothing else on it? + 2.2.2. ...DOS and Windows 3.x on it? + 2.2.3. ...Stacker (tm) disk compression + 2.2.4. ...>500 MB drive running Disk Mangler, DriveLamer, etc + 2.2.5. ...Double/DriveSpace (tm) disk compression + 2.2.6. ...OS/2 (tm) ? (any 2.x or higher version) + 2.2.7. ...Windows NT (tm) ? (why?) + 2.2.8. ...no hard drive? (diskless station) + 2.2.9. ...notebook computer? + 2.2.10. How do I copy my Win95 installation to another hard drive? * 2.3. How do I install Windows 95 from... + 2.3.1. ...floppies? + 2.3.2. ...CD-ROM drive? (Harder than you think) + 2.3.3. ...network server? ("Standard" shared install) + 2.3.4. ...network server? ("Copy the cabs to a server" quick install) + 2.3.5. How do I make Setup NOT install things like Internet Explorer, MSN, etc? * 2.4. I'm having problems with... + 2.4.1. ...rebooting after first part of setup + 2.4.2. ...reading disk 2 + 2.4.3. ..."Safe" recovery + 2.4.4. ...part two of setup can't read drivers from CD-ROM + 2.4.5. ...part two of setup can't read drivers from network * 2.5. Can I install two separate copies of Win95? + 2.5.1. Can I boot from a floppy disk and then run Win95 from a hard drive? * 2.6. How do I install old DOS and Windows 3.1 in a Win95 system? * 2.7. Why should I make a startup disk? * 2.8. Top ten installation mistakes * 2.9. Things to try before Re-Installing * 2.10. Things to do before re-installing to ensure a good re-installation * 2.11. Top ten re-installation mistakes * 2.12. Things to try before giving up * 2.13. How do I un-install Win95 from… + 2.13.1. ...installation on top of old Windows 3.x? + 2.13.2. ...installation on separate directory or drive? + 2.13.3. ...a computer with DriveSpace 3 (tm) disk compression? + 2.13.4. ...a server based install? + 2.13.5. ...a diskless workstation? * 2.14. Top ten Un-Installation mistakes ------------------------------ Subject: 2.1. Basics about Win95 vs. Win 3.x and DOS Back up (Make a copy of) your hard drive first, if you don't know what you're doing! Back up anyway even if you do. Windows 95 is a very different beast from Windows 3.1, different from MS-DOS, different from anything else out there. Treat it like Windows 95 and not like DOS, and it will install and perform like Windows 95. This is especially true with installation. Try to remove as many old DOS drivers, TSRs, disk compressors, disk managers, etc before attempting to install. Setup will recognize a host of such programs and warn you to remove them before continuing. Heed that warning! And if you have any doubts as to what Setup will do to your computer, back up your hard drive first! One very useful function of Setup is creating a Startup Disk to start the computer from, in case Win95 can't start on its own. Setup will ask you if you want a Startup disk just before it copies its files to your hard drive. Make up a Startup Disk. You can even uninstall Win95 from this startup disk, provided you enabled Uninstallation in Setup (If you installed on top of Win 3.1). NOTE: The Startup disk that Setup makes for you will not contain any real mode (DOS) drivers for hardware. It only contains basic utilities you'd normally associate with DOS (scandisk, etc) plus utilities to import or export Registry keys (or the entire Registry), and the Uninstaller. You must add drivers to the disk's DOS configuration (and hence you should know how to configure stuff in DOS) if you expect to use such hardware after booting from that disk. Another very useful tool, though it doesn't get built during Setup, is the Emergency Recovery Disk. If you own a CD-ROM version of Win95, copy the ERU utilities, from \OTHER\MISC\ERU to your Win95 directory, after you finish installing Win95. Then, when you want to make a recovery disk, run eru.exe. Afterwards, if you ever corrupt your Win95 setup, run erd.exe (the DOS counterpart to eru) to re-build the lost configuration! * 2.1.1. Basics about OEM Service Release 2 vs original Win95, Win 3.x, and DOS Much of the original Windows 95 install rules above also apply to version 4.00.950B, more commonly known as OSR2, or even (quite mistakenly) "Windows 97". Here are additional points to know before installing 4.00.950B: * Without special "attention", 4.00.950B will only install on a clean computer (without DOS, Win 3.1, or Win95, or any other operating system). The OSR2 FAQ (http://ling.ucsd.edu/~erwin/osr2.html) contains details on how to install 4.00.950B on a system that already has a version of Windows. * 4.00.950B's version of DOS (DOS 7.1) will not run Windows 3.1 (as per FAQ pages 3 and 12). This version's IO.SYS includes special code to block other versions of Windows from starting. (Download this patch to fix DOS 7.1 so it can run Windows 3.x). However, this version of DOS will run other DOS apps, including games, as long as they don't perform direct disk writes (even if you use FAT32 file system). * Read the OSR2 FAQ after you read this one. ------------------------------ Subject: 2.2. How do I install Windows 95 on a computer with... Well, let me get some basics about the Win95 setup straight first. Floppy users should first virus-scan their systems before installing from floppies. MS's Knowledge Base article Q136111 explains how viruses can ruin your second disk, because that disk is in DMF (1.68 MB) format. A boot-record virus will remove the DMF boot record, rendering it useless. Alternatively, you can Write-protect the disks; Some idiot at MS's production lab decided they should ship all Microsoft disks write-enabled. That same KB article describes that, while Setup will try to write to Disk 2 with your name and registration info, you can leave the disk write-protected and tell Setup to ignore the write-protect error. CD-ROM users: make sure you can read the CD-ROM from DOS. This means loading a real-mode CD-ROM driver into your DOS config, either already on your hard disk or from your boot floppy. Network users: If you're installing from floppies or CD-ROM, pay attention to the above notes as though it were a stand alone computer. If you install Win95 through the network instead, also read the notes in 2.3.3 below. Don't forget to ask your Administrator if you can install Win95; he has to make preparations to his server to let it work! * 2.2.1. ...nothing else on it? You need to prepare a File Allocation Table (FAT) partition on your hard drive to install Windows 95 to. The first bootable partition must use FAT file system, regardless of where you install Win95. If you bought the Win95 package designed for PCs without Windows (meaning not the upgrade) it will come with a startup disk for this purpose. The startup disk works much like the setup disk for MS-DOS 6.22; it will create a partition and format it for you. The disk also contains the traditional MS-DOS utilities like fdisk, format, sys, himem.sys, to do this manually. It will then ask for Setup Disk 1 or the CD-ROM, which installs the Win95 setup wizard to take you the rest of the way. NOTE: Some OEM CD-ROM distributors might not have included an MS-DOS driver for the CD-ROM drive on the startup disk. If this is so, when the boot disk setup asks you for the CD-ROM disk, it won't find it. Tell the manufacturer to correct this. If you're adventurous enough to do this yourself, the config.sys and autoexec.bat files on the boot disk have instructions on how to add your DOS CD-ROM driver. If you choose to install the upgrade version on to an empty system, you will need a boot disk with the DOS utilities I mentioned. You will also need your Windows 3.1 Disk 1, as proof that you're eligible for the upgrade. Part way through preparing the inital setup, it will ask you to "locate" the original installation of Windows 3.1, at which point you can insert your Windows 3.1 disk 1 and have Setup search there for it. 4.00.950B users must use their Win95 boot disk (DOS 7.1), add any needed CD-ROM or network drivers, AND use that particular version of fdisk to create FAT32 partitions. If you don't want to use FAT32 you can use any DOS version to create hard disk partitions and run the Setup from. I could install 4.00.950B with only a DOS 6.22 boot disk. * 2.2.2. ...DOS and Windows 3.x on it? Most likely you will have the upgrade version of Win95, and in the case of the CD-ROM version, you will already have a DOS CD-ROM driver loaded and working. Microsoft recommends you run Win95 setup from within Windows 3.1, which does work, but if you plan on installing Win95 in a separate directory than your existing Windows, you should run setup from DOS instead. Keep it simple. If you install from within Windows 3.1, and you choose to install on top of your existing Windows, be sure to allow Setup to copy your existing configuration in case you wish to uninstall Win95 later. A safer bet is to install Win95 in its own directory, which gives you the option to dual-boot between your original DOS and Win95. Uninstalling then becomes a simple matter of deltree c:\win95, and removing the remaining traces from the root directory (including a sys c: to restore the original DOS system files). * 2.2.3. ...Stacker (TM) disk compression? Microsoft recommends to uncompress your drive before installing Win95, but it does work with real-mode Stacker drivers. Just install normally, but keep your real-mode Stacker disk drivers installed when you do. You will lose performance on disk access as long as you maintain your DOS version of Stacker. Otherwise the same rules apply as for DOS and Windows 3.x. * 2.2.4. ...>500 MB drive running Disk Mangler, DriveLamer, etc? These disk managers allow systems, that otherwise can't handle drives with more than 1024 cylinders, to work with these drives. They're typically larger than 500 megabytes. Ontrack's Disk Manager and MicroHouse's DrivePro work OK with Win95's 32-bit disk drivers, so you can install like you could for an upgrade, but you should consider a BIOS upgrade and a system backup before attempting to install Win95 on systems with disks bigger than 500 megabytes. These disk managers are vulnerable to boot record viruses, making your system unstartable! On a system that supports large hard drives by design, a virus strike will not cause such damage (though it will do other nasty stuff of course; at least the virus is easier to remove!) Warning on FAT32: Ontrack's Disk Manager 7.0 or earlier does not work with protected mode disk drivers and FAT32 (it does seem to work with MS-DOS mode access though). If you must keep the disk mangler because your BIOS does not work with disks larger than 500 MB, use normal FAT instead. Let me get this 1024 cylinder nonsense straightened out once and for all. IBM compatibles, ever since the XT, cannot start from a hard drive partition with more than 1024 cylinders, even though partitions may exist beyond that and may even be accessible after starting up. The original FAT file system cannot exceed this 1024 cylinder limit either, and FAT partitions can't go past cylinder 1024, regardless of the total number of cylinders. Other file systems easily handle this, but not FAT, nor VFAT (Win95). And no Intel-based PC on this planet can boot from any hard drive partition that sits beyond this limit, regardless of the file system! Disk manager hacks and LBA translation reduce the number of "logical" cylinders, and usually increase the number of "logical" heads to compensate, in order for these lame PCs to boot up from such a hard drive. Since LBA translation is built in to most Intel-based PCs today, use it. Or upgrade your BIOS. Don't use software to accomplish this translation, and don't waste time with other software hacks or "magic" to work around this. One precaution to prevent a virus strike (and other mistakes, like booting off a non-system disk), is to set your BIOS to always boot from drive C: (like C: first, A: second, or C, A) so your disk manager software will always load before anything else does. A very kind representative from Ontrack took the time to clear up the statements I made in this particular FAQ question: 2. If you have a "normal" DOS MBR, and the system gets hit with a boot-sector virus. Oh, yes, the PC boots, but the nasty virus is lurking to do its dirty work with no warning from DOS at all. 3. Now, if you have Ontrack's Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO), the virus over-writes part of the DDO code, and the user cannot boot the PC, but usually gets a warning like "DDO Integrity Error" which means just what it states, something has corrupted the DDO code. In most cases, that "something" is the nasty virus. The user gets a warning, knows something is wrong, and then is able to take the steps to remedy the damage. These two points are the ones I'll ponder here: 2) If the PC can at least boot, you will be able to start your system with some kind of boot disk (Remember the Startup Disk? Did you make one?) and run a DOS version of a virus killer to remove the boot record virus. Win95's quite attentive in this respect; you'll know if you have a boot record virus as soon as the Desktop appears. Oh you could load DDO drivers in config.sys on the boot disk (DM 6.03 includes instructions on how to do this) but you still won't be able to repair the DDO partition table without destroying the rest of the disk (since the virus already destroyed it). The best you could do is back up the data onto another hard disk (At last there's a use for DOSLFNBK; the real mode DOS long filename backup utility) and install the Win95 DOS startup files (SYS x: (x=Target drive)) on it. Regardless of our Ontrack friend's claims, I did not find a utility on the DM disk to repair the DDO partition table without destroying everything afterwards (DDO boot record, FATs, directory tree, etc) 3) I didn't get any warning at all besides "Non-system disk or disk error" on the virus infected DDO drive. If I were a typical reader of this FAQ, meaning, "All I know how to do is hit the Start button, tell me more," this error message would mean nothing more to me than, "my hard disk is toast, please help me fix it." Here's more from our Ontrack rep: Just another tidbit on the off-chance that you are unaware of new BIOS limitations. There are a number of newer LBA BIOS's that have limitations at 2.1GB, 3.27GB as well as 4.2GB. Here again, Ontrack's Disk Manager comes back into play to solve these problems. Uh-huh. Didn't Award fix that with their 4.50G BIOS? Wasn't that released in early 1995? Doesn't standard FAT have a partition size limit of 2 GB? Doesn't FAT32 work with larger disks anyways? * 2.2.5. ...Double/DriveSpace (TM) disk compression? Simply perform your normal installation as per the Upgrade. Win95 comes with 32-bit versions of the DoubleSpace/DriveSpace drivers and they will unload the real mode drivers from memory when Win95 runs. 4.00.950B comes with DriveSpace 3 and the utilities needed to convert existing compressed drives to DriveSpace 3. You should pay attention to the info in FAQ page 11 for more help. * 2.2.6. ...OS/2 (TM) ? (any 2.x or higher version) Microsoft does not support installing Win95 on systems with OS/2, any version. Attempting to install Win95 on a system like this will wipe out any capability of starting OS/2. However, if you use Boot Manager, you can install Win95 in a partition of its own, or in the same partition as MS-DOS. This will isolate Win95 from OS/2. Setup will temporarily disable Boot Manager by making the DOS partition the active partition. To re-enable Boot Manager after installing Win95, run fdisk and make the Boot Manager partition (the little 1 MB partition of type Non-DOS) the active partition again. This also has the advantage of using HPFS file system on the OS/2 boot partition. Of course, installing Win95 on an HPFS partition is not possible. Win95 doesn't have any HPFS file system drivers yet, though I'm hoping for it. * 2.2.7. ...Windows NT (TM) ? Supposedly, Setup will recognize NTLDR.COM and insert itself into the list of OSes to boot from. As long as you have a FAT partition to install Win95 to, this will work. Win95 does not support installation on an NTFS partition either. If you want to triple-boot between DOS, Win95, and NT, MS has some wicked setup procedure that lets you use NTLDR to pick your booting OS (like OS/2's Boot Manager). The details are in the Win95 Resource Kit. WARNING: Do not install Windows NT 4.0 on top of an existing Win95 installation! Likewise don't install Win95 on top of NT. The Registry acts quite differently between these versions. * 2.2.8. ...no hard drive? (diskless station) NOT RECOMMENDED, though it is possible. The big reason is Win95 will use a network drive for its Virtual Memory swap file, which will cause heavy traffic on the file server. Put minimum 16 MB memory on each diskless workstation, to minimize swapping to the server. Also see How to prevent random hard drive access, to further reduce server swapping. To perform a diskless install of Win95, you need a server based install already on the file server. You also need a real mode connection to the network (either on a boot disk, or a virtual floppy on the file server via a boot EPROM on the network card). You merely install all the Win95 files into your home directory, wherever that is. Unfortunately, this only works with real mode network clients; you can't use 32-bit network components on a completely diskless workstation. If you use a boot EPROM, you need to make a virtual boot disk with the Win95 system files (IO.SYS etc) on it. Use whatever utilities come with your network server to do this. Other details are in Microsoft's Knowledge Base article Q133349. * 2.2.9. ...notebook computer? You merely install it on the notebook as you would on any other computer. Because of complications with CD-ROM and network support on some notebook computers, I suggest you use the floppy disk version because you don't need to load any fancy drivers, as compared to the CD-ROM version, to get running. Setup will recognize special brands of notebook computers (Toshiba and Zenith for example), and you should change the "Computer Type" if it did not. This lets Setup tune the power management features to work with it. Once you finish, run the PC Card control panel (My Computer / Control Panel / PC Card) to let Win95 install 32-bit PC card support for it. * 2.2.10. How do I copy my Win95 installation to another hard drive? First, don't use xcopy. I'm telling you this up front because too many people out there just can't get this image-copying of Win95 right. Sure, there are utilities for copying the long filenames etc from DOS, but not all of us can handle this. So here's my sure fire way of copying Win95 from one hard drive to another and keeping ALL settings in tact. 1. Hook up your target hard drive and partition it using fdisk or whatever. Let's say it's Drive D: but it could be any drive letter. Use a Primary partition. Don't worry about making it active; we do that later. 2. Run Win95, and right-click on the target drive and hit "Format..." Make sure you turn on "Copy system files" (so it copies the IO.SYS and boot record properly.) Quick or Full format will work; if it's an old drive you might want to use Full format so it can scan the surface of that disk for errors. 3. In any Explorer window, hit View / Options... and turn on "Show all files". This way you'll copy the 20 MB or so of hidden files and Registry, and maintain all their original attributes and long filenames. 4. Copy the Win95 directory's contents first. (This is in case you let Win95 manage virtual memory...) Make a folder on your target with the same name as your Win95 directory. Then select ALL files and folders except for WIN386.SWP if it exists, and drag them to the Win95 folder on the target. (You can hit Edit/Select All to do this quickly, then hold CTRL and click on the WIN386.SWP file to unselect that file.) 5. Now copy the rest of the hard drive. Select ALL files from the Root of the source drive, and unselect IO.SYS, COMMAND.COM, Win386.SWP if it exists, and your Win95 directory! Be sure to leave MSDOS.SYS selected! (Don't forget, MSDOS.SYS is really a settings file now!) Then drag them on to your target. 6. When all this copying is done, install your target hard drive into its system, and have a DOS 7.x (Win95 DOS) boot disk handy with fdisk on it. Boot with that floppy, run fdisk, and make the new partition active. Reboot with the copied disk. 7. NOTE: This step may be needed... Copy sys.com from your new \windows\command directory, and msdos.sys from the hard drive's root directory, to your boot disk and type sys c: from your boot disk. Sometimes you need to rebuild the startup io.sys and msdos.sys this way. If necessary, copy back the msdos.sys file. NOTE: I won't post or entertain thoughts on copying a Win95 installation any other way, so stop sending me messages about DOSLFNBK, GHOST, or any other copy utility. You will probably have to perform steps six and seven if you use any of those utilities anyways. ------------------------------ Subject: 2.3. How do I install Windows 95 from... * 2.3.1. ...floppies? For basic systems, and notebooks, this is the best source to install from. Setup will detect all hardware it can, and add protected mode support for it. It does take a while to sit and flip disks, but you will have a clean installation afterwards. This also gives you a good excuse to delete or hide your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT before running Setup. First, boot to DOS, then run Setup on disk 1. If you don't already have DOS on the computer, boot using any DOS disk and prepare the hard drive for a normal DOS installation. The Stand-alone version of Win95 will have a boot disk for this purpose. * 2.3.2. ...CD-ROM drive? (Harder than you think) You need a real mode CD-ROM driver in place to run Setup initially. My favorite method is to prepare a boot disk (or use the boot disk from the non-upgrade version) which loads the CD-ROM drivers, then runs Setup from the CD-ROM.) This way there's no chance of Setup arguing with a CONFIG.SYS file on the target drive. A boot disk only needs these entries in CONFIG.SYS: DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS DEVICE=(your CD-ROM driver) /D:MSCD001 (and whatever parameters it needs) And these lines in AUTOEXEC.BAT: MSCDEX /D:MSCD001 /M:4 (and whatever preferences you have) SMARTDRV 2048 2048 I suggest including smartdrv to speed up the first part of installation. Include smartdrv after mscdex so it can cache the CD-ROM accesses. * 2.3.3. ...network server? ("Standard" shared install) Server based installs work like they did back in Win 3.1, but you need to run a different setup program, netsetup, to install the server copy. netsetup comes on the upgrade CD-ROM version in \ADMIN\NETTOOLS\NETSETUP. NOTE: netsetup does not come with the floppies or OEM CD-ROM. And you can't get it from Microsoft's web site, either. You can get it from the Win95 Resource Kit if you don't have it. Perhaps the two best advantages of using netsetup to make a server based install, are 1: you can do shared installs, saving local hard drive space, and 2: you can apply service packs and other components to server installs, which will take effect for server based, and local installs. Service Pack 1 Admin Edition includes a utility to apply the service pack to a server based install. To use netsetup: 1. Install Win95 on one computer as a stand-alone, and install network support for it so you can write to the server drives. 2. Run netsetup from the CD-ROM disk. It will list several tasks you must do to complete the server install. 3. Do the first task: specify the target server and directory you will install the admin copy to. 4. Do the second task: specify the source drive (usually the CD-ROM) and install. It will perform three passes of installs; one for stand-alone installs, one for shared installs, and one for the initial setup files. 5. (optional) Write an installation script. The script editor is rather simple; you use the option menus to turn options on and off, to specify what network components to load, and settings for them. 6. Done. Go to a workstation and run setup from the server to test the install, and any install script you wrote. One dumb thing about netsetup is you have to run it from Windows 95, which means you have to install Win95 once, then run it on that station. It will run in Windows 3.1, but you won't be able to create an installation script until you run it from Win95. NOTE: Installing the OEM CD-ROM version to a server using netsetup does not entirely work! The OEM version includes the MS Internet Explorer from Plus, and the PRECOPY.CAB files contain references to those components. Netsetup will not attempt to install those, which is why MS didn't bother including it with the OEM version. You could find out what files it looks for and manually insert them, but that's a bit of a pain. You'll just have to shell out the $250.00 for the non-upgrade, non-OEM, Win95 CD-ROM. Installing the upgrade version works, but it will ask you for Win 3.1 evidence before it will install. * 2.3.4. ...network server? ("Copy the cabs to a server" quick install) You can install Win95 using its cabinet files from any location, even a network share. This method will not allow for shared installations of diskless installations, but it does let you quickly re-install a dead machine and it takes a lot less server disk space. The same automation tools (batch.exe) also work, but you can't add components to a "cab" installation (using infinst.exe) and automatically install them along with the rest of Win95. These steps are very simple; copy the Win95 CD's \WIN95 directory to a network share, and install your workstations from it. You can create a msbatch.inf using batch.exe or by hand, and copy it to the same directory as the cabinet files, to automate the installation, but you're restricted to components that come with Win95. * 2.3.5. How do I make Setup NOT install things like MSIE, MSN, etc? Quick background... OEM releases of Win95 include some built in components, such as Internet Explorer, Internet Mail and News, MSN, the "Online services", and such. These components are not optional on OEM releases by design. There are legal processes in motion forcing Microsoft to stop this practice, but in the meantime you can use these techniques to skip installing them. Such uses for unbundling may be network installations, troubleshooting Internet setups, preventing, "This may affect Registered Programs" from appearing for no apparent reason, and the like. The CompuClinic folks are credited for assistance here (http://www.compuclinic.com/). Legal Stuff: Until such time that OEMs may unbundle these components, I intended these steps only be used by private users or network admins who use Win95 internally. OEMs and resellers attempting to use these techniques might face legal action from MS for violating their license agreements. Check to see if you're allowed to do this before doing so. ...with that out of the way... 1. Copy your Win95 CD's \WIN95 directory to a convenient place on your hard drive or network server. You'll need as much as 50 MB of disk space. Users with a pre-installed Win95 will find an installable copy already on their hard drive in \WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS ready for editing; you should move this directory somewere else if you plan on erasing your previous Win95 afterwards. 2. From a DOS prompt, change to that directory and use extract to extract setruppp.inf from there. Use the command line "extract setuppp.inf precopy2.cab" NOTE: Strangely enough, you need to boot from a hard drive before you use the extract utility; it kept telling me "disk write protected" when it tried to write the file if I booted from a floppy drive! 3. Edit setuppp.inf to taste using the information below. 4. Edit layout.inf (In the same directory) so that the line containing setuppp.inf reads: setuppp.inf=0,,xxxx (xxxx represents the resulting size of setuppp.inf after your edits, and the Zero indicates to Setup to use the existing copy instead of extracting it from a cabinet file). Also comment-out or remove any .INF entries you commented out or removed in setuppp.inf. 5. Run Setup normally to install your cleaned-up version. These components and coresponding setuppp.inf entries are "Non-optional" in OEM releases and are candidates for removal: OHARE.INF Internet Explorer (All OEM releases) MOS.INF The Microsoft Network (All releases, including the "Setup the Microsoft Network" pieces) ATHENA.INF Internet Mail and News (OSR2 and 2.1) INETMAIL.INF Internet Mail add-on for Windows Messaging (OSR2 and 2.1) MSINFO.INF The "Online Services" installables (OSR2 and 2.1) QUARTZ.INF ActiveMovie (OSR2 and 2.1) My own experience with this editing suggests you keep ActiveMovie however, as it replaces many commented-out components in the original Media Player which will be unusable otherwise. Each of these components, with the exception of The Microsoft Network, are available on your Win95 CD-ROM in the \OTHER directory. Newer versions of MSN are available from PC dealers, cereal boxes (I'm not kidding!), etc for free. The OSR2 FAQ contains other edits you might want to perform, to allow you to install OEM releases on machines that already have an OS, or to manipulate setup further. In addition, you can perform network installations of Win95 with this modified kit. Use batch.exe to build a customized msbatch.inf file; see the Network Server installation steps above. ------------------------------ Subject: 2.4. I'm having problems with... * 2.4.1. ...rebooting after first part of setup On systems with bizarre DOS configurations, you may get a "Windows protection error", or "This VxD conflicts with another driver already loaded". This is because a DOS driver loaded before win.com loaded, and a corresponding protected mode driver can't load. To avoid this, just when the computer reboots for part two of setup, press F8 when you see Starting Windows 95... then select Safe mode command prompt only. From here, delete or rename your config.sys and autoexec.bat files. Then re-boot and proceed with part two normally. You may get this error if you use an unrecognized CD-ROM driver (Usually the case for IDE CD-ROMs attached to PCI IDE adapters), or if you use a DOS network driver and a Win95 net card driver tries to load. The above technique will work around both these cases. If you have to do this, you won't be able to configure a printer or copy any other drivers until you finish Setup. No matter; if it asks you for Win95 files, just cancel, and wait until Setup finishes. * 2.4.2. ...reading disk 2 The disks come in MS's new "DMF" format, which holds nearly 2 MB on a 1.44 MB disk. The first disk is a standard 1.44 MB disk, and Setup loads a driver to read the DMF disks. A DMF disk can get destroyed by a boot record virus, because the virus over-writes the DMF boot record. As a precaution, write-protect the floppies before using them. For some really dumb reason, Microsoft insisted on shipping the disks write-enabled. Setup will also try to write your registration info on disk 2. If you have the disk write protected, you can just hit "Continue" and Setup will continue without writing to the disk. For details, read KB article Q136111. * 2.4.3. ..."Safe" recovery If you re-run Setup on a bad installation of Win95, you will get a prompt to use "Safe Recovery". This will let you either Undo the install, or Redo the install using safer detection techniques. My suggestion is to Undo the install, then use the technique above, regarding Rebooting after first part of setup. Also, try installing on a target drive with no DOS startup files (config.sys). * 2.4.4. ...part two of setup. I can't read drivers from CD-ROM This means Setup didn't load protected mode CD-ROM drivers for your drive, which happens for many reasons. This will only affect your ability to add printer drivers and setting up MS Exchange, both of which you can skip and do later. You should make sure, after finishing Setup, you bug the CD-ROM manufacturer for a Win95 driver. Also check the section on SCSI and IDE CD-ROM support. PCI IDE or PCI SCSI adapters won't kick in until the second re-boot, so such CD-ROMs won't work until then. Just let it finish and it will work. Later on, if you have to use real mode CD-ROM or net card drivers, you can add printers and set up Exchange once you can use the CD-ROM or network again. * 2.4.5. ...part two of setup. I can't read drivers from the network If you installed network support but you didn't get a network log in at the start of part two (so you can access the file server), this means the Win95 network support didn't install correctly. As per the CD-ROM install, you can skip the Exchange and Printer setup until you get the protected mode network support working. PCI net cards won't operate at all until the second re-boot, when the PCI Bus driver kicks in. Just let it finish and your net card will work on the second re-boot. ISA PnP cards react the same way. This could also mean you skipped network support to begin with, or it could not load a network card driver. Again, you can skip the Exchange and Printer setup until you correct this. NOTE: There is a way to work around this minor problem; use a real mode network client (Either netx, vlm, or Workgroup Connection for DOS) to run Setup from, and tell it to use your Existing ODI or NDIS 2 driver. This is the default net card choice if you install from a server-based copy. The second time it re-boots it will read your real mode driver and add the components needed to make it work with 32-bit network software. Finally, after you log in to the server to continue Setup, it will detect your net card and replace the ODI or NDIS 2 support with the appropriate Win95 support. This method of loading network support for PCI and ISA PnP cards can produce some unusual side effects. For example, if you booted from a floppy disk to get on the network, Part 2 of Setup will try to read the NDIS 2 or ODI driver from the floppy disk! If this occurs you will get a "General failure reading Drive A:" error message. When you do, re-insert that disk and hit "Retry" so Setup will continue. Another side effect is Win95 shutting down in the middle of a driver file copy! To prevent this, make sure you erase this line in msbatch.inf on the Server copy: NoPrompt2Boot=1 This line immediately re-boots the computer after the end of all the Setup Part 2 stuff. If you remove it, Setup will prompt you to re-start the computer when it's all finished. You should wait until Win95 detects and installs all other hardware before you press "OK" on this requester. If Win95 asks you to re-start the computer at any other time, tell it NO. ------------------------------ Subject: 2.5. Can I install two separate copies of Win95? The problem with this is there's only one msdos.sys file, which points to only one copy of Windows 95. You could edit msdos.sys (which is just a text file in Win95) to point to either copy, but this is annoying. A better technique is to borrow someone's copy of OS/2 and install Boot Manager, then have two bootable partitions, each with its own copy of Win95. The first technique is great, however, for developers experimenting with their apps, without destroying their primary copy of Win95, and for those without friends using OS/2. 4.00.950B users can't use FAT32 file system if you install a non-950B version alongside a 950B version. Be careful. * 2.5.1. Can I boot from a floppy disk and then run Win95 from a hard drive? A few people actually asked this... 1. Get Win95 to start normally (off the hard drive!) 2. Make a Win95 DOS boot disk using Add/Remove Programs / Startup Disk or formatting a disk with /S 3. Copy the msdos.sys file from your hard drive to the floppy. This file contains the pointers to your installed copy of Win95; you can edit it as you need to as well. 4. Copy himem.sys, ifshlp.sys, and setver.exe from your Win95 directory to the boot floppy. 5. Try booting from the floppy. The idea is, msdos.sys contains the paths to your installed copy of Win95, which could be on another directory or even another drive. This lets you install it on drive D: for example, but it still needs to boot from A: or C: to bring up the real mode bootstrap (Good ol' DOS). You will need to make one edit on the boot floppy's MSDOS.SYS file though; change "HostWinBootDrv=C" to "HostWinBootDrv=A". ------------------------------ Subject: 2.6. How do I install old DOS and Windows 3.1 on a Win95 system? I do not recommend installing old DOS on a Win95 machine at all. Win95's included MS-DOS 7.0, in Single Mode, can run anything that previous versions of DOS can, including Windows 3.1 or Windows for Workgroups! If you have to run old DOS programs that don't run in DOS sessions in Win95, check out the Running MS-DOS Games page. With that aside, to install the missing utilities that DOS 7.0 blatantly forgot from DOS 6.22: 1. Find the \OLDMSDOS directory on the Win95 CD-ROM in \OTHER\OLDMSDOS. 2. Run the install.bat from that directory, within Win95. 3. When asked to, shut down and re-start your computer. This is because the old DOS programs are really from DOS 6.22, and the batch file SETVER's them to that version of DOS. You'll find other old DOS toys in the directories of \OTHER, including MSD and the Central Point version of MSBACKUP. To install Windows 3.1 or Windows for Workgroups on a system running Win95: 1. Find your original Win 3.1/WFWG disks of course. Silly. 2. Exit to Single mode DOS by Start Menu/Shut Down, and "Restart computer in MS-DOS Mode". 3. Make copies of any config.sys or autoexec.bat you have (You shouldn't have these anyway!) 4. Run Setup from your Win 3.1 disk 1 and install normally, into any directory that Win95 isn't in! Like C:\WIN31 5. When Setup finishes, choose the option to Exit to DOS. 6. Make copies of any changes that Win 3.1 Setup made to your config.sys and autoexec.bat, and restore your original versions of these files. You'll need these copies later on! 7. Type exit to go back into Win95. 8. Find win.com in your Win 3.1 installation, right-click on that file, and hit "Properties". 9. Hit the Program tab, hit Advanced, hit "MS-DOS Mode", hit "Specify new MS-DOS Configuration." 10. In the empty spaces below, copy & paste the text from the saved config.sys and autoexec.bat that Win 3.1 Setup modified. CTRL-V works in these text boxes to paste text from the clipboard in. Add a LOCK C: to the end of the special autoexec.bat (for 32-bit disk and file access, if you wish to use it). 11. Modify the resulting text entries so you use the right versions of these files. Finally OK everything. Use Win95 versions (C:\WIN95\.....) of these files: * HIMEM.SYS * EMM386.EXE * SMARTDRV.EXE Use Win 3.1 versions (C:\WIN31\... or C:\WINDOWS\...) of these files (Only relevant to WFWG actually) * IFSHLP.SYS * NET START * MSCDEX (If you share a CD-ROM via WFWG) When you double-click on win.com here, or on its resulting PIF file (Shortcut to MS-DOS program), your computer will restart using this special DOS configuration. When you exit Win 3.1, Win95 will restart. Trust me; this is the absolute best way to get Win 3.1 working on a Win95 machine, if you don't have an older DOS already installed. NOTE: Windows for Workgroups, in particular, will ask you to "Restart Computer" sometimes. This is fine; Win95 won't try to re-start because a line in the special AUTOEXEC.BAT (WIN.COM /EX) won't execute, and your computer will re-start still using the special DOS configuration. The only way to get back into Win95 safely, is to exit Win 3.1 with Program Manager (File/Exit Windows). Also notice, that you'll find files named CONFIG.W40 and AUTOEXEC.W40 in your hard drive. These files are Win95's DOS configuration. Leave them alone! Don't touch them! Win95 copies these back to CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT when you finish with Win 3.1. And don't try to install old DOS on a Win95 machine. Just don't. You'll regret it. And don't ask me why. You'll regret hearing why. 4.00.950B users will discover a VERY ANNOYING message when they try to run Win 3.1 under 950B's version of DOS (MS-DOS 7.1): "The version of MS-DOS you are running is incompatible with this version of Windows. Your system had been halted." (grrr... this string is hard-wired into IO.SYS so I think this is a deliberate hack on MS's part) ------------------------------ Subject: 2.7. Why should I make a startup disk? (Why didn't I think of this question? Thanks guys) The startup disk contains a handful of basic utilities you can use to fix your broken Win95 installation, and even uninstall Win95. The traditional DOS utilities for disk management are in there, as are a version of edit, regedit, and the uninstaller. To make a startup disk, answer "YES" to the question about the startup disk. If you skipped this part and want to make up a startup disk, run Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, and hit the "Startup Disk" tab. * Notes regarding REGEDIT on the startup disk The version of regedit on the startup disk only lets you import and export Registry pieces (or the whole Registry) to text files you can edit using good ol' edit. To build an editable copy of the Registry, change to your Win95 directory and type: REGEDIT /E REGBCKUP.REG This will export the two Registry files to a text file with said name. Copy this text file to a separate floppy disk (it'll exceed 1 MB easily) and edit it as you feel necessary. To completely re-create a Registry from this backup text file, from your Win95 directory type this: REGEDIT /C REGBCKUP.REG Regedit can also import and export portions of the Registry. Outside of Win95, type regedit without parameters for a list of extra options. ------------------------------ Subject: 2.8. Top ten installation mistakes 10. Hitting the "exit" button on the 13th disk 9. Lending your install disks to a friend, after you let Setup write your name to Disk 2 8. Installing on your station at work, without letting your M.I.S. manager know (He'll find out though...) 7. Installing on top of Windows 3.1 without enabling Uninstall 6. Installing from a unsupported CD-ROM drive or network 5. Installing on a system that doesn't work with 32-bit disk & file access in WFWG 3.11 4. Restoring a backup of old Windows on top of your new Win95 install (real dumb) 3. Not doing a backup of old Windows before installing 2. Leaving the floppies write-enabled while installing 1. Installing from a BOOTLEG CD-ROM (Watch it: They're showing up now. Buy the original and save yourself the troubles!) ------------------------------ Subject: 2.9. Things to try before re-installing Oh No! You installed some 16-bit program and it over-wrote too many Win95 system files! You need to re-install... or some other disaster makes you think you need to re-install. Not. Win95 has a pretty good defense mechanism against 16-bit programs that replace system files, and other disasters. All key system files have a backup copy in \WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP (or wherever you installed Win95). Most cases, Win95 will detect that system files got over-written and it'll offer to copy Win95 versions back. Let it do so! This includes any winsock.dll files (You should use Win95's dial up networking anyway, not Win 3.1 dialers like Trumpet). If it doesn't do that, you can always copy them back yourself. Go into "Safe mode command prompt only" (Press F8 on "Starting Windows 95..." then select said option), then: XCOPY C:\WIN95\SYSTEM\SYSBCKUP\*.* C:\WIN95\SYSTEM from the DOS prompt. Also, try editing system.ini. Inspect the [386Enh] section for any additional device=xxxxx.386 drivers. On a clean Win95 install, you shouldn't have ANY of these files. This goes double for any "vshare.386" files that show up; Win95 has a built-in device=*vshare driver. Removing old Win 3.1 386 Enhanced drivers will clear up many problems. If you get a "Registry corrupted" error of some kind, inspect your hard drive for errors. On the requester that tells you to "Restore from backup and Restart", press CTRL-ESC to bring up the Win95 task manager, and run scandskw.exe from there to check the drive for errors. Scandskw does a better job of scanning Win95 drives, and it handles long filename problems better than scandisk does at the DOS prompt. Once it finishes, you can hit that button to restore the Registry and re-start. However, if you continue to get this kind of error, start investigating your hard drive system. You might be over-driving your HD at Mode 4 when it's not designed for it, for example. Or maybe the drive's just on its last legs and dying. Do a back up as soon as you can! This Registry stuff is actually a good reason to use User Profiles. Each user will have their own copy of the second half of the Registry; the user.dat file. If the master user.dat gets ruined and you need to completely re-install, you can bring back your program settings for your 32-bit programs just by logging in as one of the users. Your hardware (system.dat) config is still toast, but you can rebuild that easy enough just by re-running the "Add new hardware" control panel. ------------------------------ Subject: 2.10. Things to do before re-installing to ensure good re-installation OK, the above techniques didn't work and you have to re-install. Here's what to do to make re-installing work best: Plan to re-install from DOS, not from within Windows or Win95. This way it'll assume a fresh installation. From the DOS prompt outside of Win95, change to your Win95 directory, and type this: ATTRIB -H -S -R *.DAT This will unhide the Registry files system.dat and user.dat. Then delete them. That's right, delete them. A corrupted Registry will cause no end of trouble until it's killed dead. If you have user profiles you can restore user.dat easily enough. If you were smart enough to make up a Registry backup with the startup disk, you can try re-building it after you delete the system.dat and user.dat, if you're sure that the backup is a good copy. Still outside of Win95, change to your Win95 directory and type: REGEDIT /C REGBCKUP.REG This will kill the current Registry files and re-build them from the .REG text file. If necessary, specify the disk path in the filename, after all, that .REG file will easily exceed 1 MB, and you probably copied it to a separate disk. If you didn't make a Registry backup, you'll have to re-install your 32-bit apps and settings, but that's safer than trying to use a corrupted Registry. Remove all the DOS drivers and TSRs you can, so it won't hinder Win95's Setup. If you have the CD-ROM version, only have the DOS CD driver, himem.sys, and mscdex loaded. Edit the remaining system.ini to remove all foreign drivers from the [386Enh] section. A clean system.ini's [386Enh] section will look exactly like this: [386Enh] ebios=*ebios device=*vshare device=*dynapage device=*vcd device=*vpd device=*int13 display=*vdd,*vflatd mouse=*vmouse, msmouse.vxd ; the mouse driver may vary, but shouldn't be .386 woafont=dosapp.fon keyboard=*vkd device=*enable PagingDrive=C: ; this may vary depending on where you put it MinPagingFileSize=32768 ; these will vary depending on your swap file MaxPagingFileSize=32768 ; Or they may be even missing, that's OK You might also have a device=*vpowerd if you have power management on your system. Don't forget: All of Win95's drivers really sit in the Registry, not here. The best bit of advice I can offer, regarding disaster recovery, is use the Backup program which comes with Win95, or use any backup program designed for Win95, to do a Full System Backup. This kind of backup will copy The Registry to tape as well as the hidden and system files. When you complete the re-install, restoring this tape will restore all your original settings. All of them. ------------------------------ Subject: 2.11. Top ten re-installation mistakes 10. Inserting the 13th disk before reading the "Things to try before re-installing" section 9. Restoring your old Windows 3.1 backup on top of your re-installed Win95 (again? Shame on you) 8. Not reading the Installation part of the FAQ over again before re-installing 7. Forgetting to uncompress your DriveSpace drive before reinstalling (It's best to make a separate compressed volume, and keep your Win95 directory OFF it) 6. Forgetting to erase the corrupt Registry before re-installing 5. Using that BOOTLEG CD-ROM to re-install from (Didn't you learn the first time?) 4. Re-installing the Win 3.1 program that made you re-install Win95 3. Forgetting to remove old garbage from system.ini, config.sys, autoexec.bat 2. Ignoring the Installation part of the FAQ, which might've prevented the need to re-install 1. Not backing up your system after you re-installed Win95 ------------------------------ Subject: 2.12. Things to try before giving up You can read the Re-Installation part of this FAQ, which covers some ways of fixing problems without re-installing, and which covers some tips to make a good re-installation. Failing that, try again from scratch, with an empty system (Meaning back-up your system first, then delete everything and try again), using the techniques in the Installation part of this FAQ. Completely kill everything, even, if necessary, doing a low-level format from your BIOS setup. Yes I know that you aren't supposed to re-low-level-format IDE and SCSI hard drives, but it does work in a pinch. Failing that, check with the hardware makers for Win95 versions of drivers, etc, and look in the MS Knowledge Base, and see about trading your hardware for Win95 compatible types. Don't waste your time with unsupported hardware. Check out the Hardware Compatibility List which contains a lot of out-dated crap, but they did sort it by manufacturer nicely for you. Also check with your software makers and tell them to get their BUTTS in gear, and make Win95 compliant versions of their software, or to fix their Win 3.1 software to make it work. (Soapbox mode on) Microsoft didn't spend a whole year and a half of beta testing, just to be ignored (Soapbox mode off) ------------------------------ Subject: 2.13. How do I uninstall Windows 95 from... * 2.13.1. ...installation on top of my old Windows 3.x? If you enabled the uninstall feature back in Setup, go to Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel, and remove Windows 95. This will restore your original Windows config files, your original DOS config files, and the original partition table and boot record of the target drive. If you didn't enable uninstall, you'll have to trash your Win95 directory using the technique below, and re-install Win 3.1 fresh. * 2.13.2. ...installation on separate directory or drive? There's no fancy uninstaller for this kind of installation. However, you can just: DELTREE C:\WIN95 (or wherever) and that'll work. To do this, get your DOS setup disks and boot from the first disk. Then, exit that setup program to a DOS prompt. From here you type: SYS C: DELTREE C:\WIN95 (or wherever) DELTREE C:\PROGRA~1 (The old "Program files" directory) COPY C:\AUTOEXEC.DOS C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT COPY C:\CONFIG.DOS C:\CONFIG.SYS then re-boot. You can then run Windows 3.1 File Manager, with "Show Hidden/System Files" turned on, to hunt for other files you don't recognize. * 2.13.3. ...a computer with DriveSpace 3 (TM) disk compression? If you installed DriveSpace 3 from MS Plus and you chose to uninstall Win95, you can still access DriveSpace 3 drives, as it keeps the real mode component drvspace.bin there. DOS will recognize this version and load it. Of course, it'll eat 100 KB of conventional memory, so you had better back up your compressed drive and re-partition it, to kill DriveSpace 3 completely. Otherwise, the techniques above for removing Win95 will work just fine. * 2.13.4. ...a server based install? The techniques above will work for a server based install, just make sure you get your right version of DOS and your old DOS network drivers back when you do it. It's also a lot less to delete. * 2.13.5. ...a diskless workstation? You'll need to change back to your DOS boot disk or DOS virtual boot disk, then just clean out Win95 from your home directory. If you installed on top of a Win 3.1 diskless install, you're better off re-installing Win 3.1 fresh. ------------------------------ Subject: 2.14. Top ten UN-installation mistakes 10. Reading the Things to try before giving up section after Uninstalling 9. Reading the Re-Installation section of the FAQ after uninstalling 8. Forgetting to convert the important Microsoft Word 7 document, when uninstalling 7. Forgetting that your database was written in Microsoft Access 95 when uninstalling 6. Forgetting to try restoring that backup you made before uninstalling 5. Calling Microsoft tech support after uninstalling (Think they'll help you now?) 4. Uninstalling, then realizing that your software vendor isn't selling Win 3.1 stuff anymore 3. Having a friend or technician discover a virus after you thought Win95 caused all your troubles, and after you uninstalled 2. Uninstalling because the program you need to use the most doesn't work (The program's broken, not the OS) 1. Buying Win95 in the first place, if you uninstalled for keeps Subject: 3. Basic Win95 usage * 3.1. ...vs Windows 3.x * 3.2. ...vs MS-DOS (tm) * 3.3. What is this "Explorer" thing? * 3.4. How do I... + 3.4.1. ...find my old Win 3.x programs? + 3.4.2. ...make a program read a file I click on? + 3.4.3. ...change what program opens what kind of file? o 3.4.3.1. How can I add or remove file extensions from a file type? + 3.4.4. ...run Windows 3.x programs? (including Windows games) o 3.4.4.1. How do I run Win 3.1 after installing Win95? o 3.4.4.2. How do I install Win 3.1 fresh in a Win95 system? + 3.4.5. ...run MS-DOS apps? + 3.4.6. ...run MS-DOS utilities? (Xtree (tm), Norton Utilities (tm), etc) + 3.4.7. ...run MS-DOS games? + 3.4.8. ...format or copy disks? + 3.4.9. ...search for files? + 3.4.10. ...add my own items to the Start Menu? o 3.4.10.1. The Desktop, Start Menu, and shortcuts + 3.4.11. ...change my display resolution? + 3.4.12. ...change my display driver? + 3.4.13. ...disable the "Full window drag" feature of MS Plus? * 3.5. Some MS-DOS utilities are missing. Where can I get them? * 3.6. Should I buy these new fancy utilities for Win95? + 3.6.1. ...Norton Navigator (tm) ? + 3.6.2. ...un-installers? + 3.6.3. ...anti-virus programs? + 3.6.4. ...Microsoft Plus (tm) ? + 3.6.5. ...RAM compression programs? + 3.6.6. ...crash-proofing utilities? * 3.7. Top ten mistakes running Windows 3.x programs * 3.8. Top ten mistakes running MS-DOS programs and games ------------------------------ Subject: 3.1. Basic Win95 usage vs Windows 3.x Win95 sports the cool new Explorer Desktop, in an attempt to be more Mac-like. Try to forget what you know about Program Manager, File Manager, Print Manager, etc because very little of it applies! Win 3.1 programs will run like they used to; the window might look a bit different, and there might be some extra buttons on the border, but they will work otherwise. Get used to using your right mouse button. On an Amiga, the right button was a "menu" button which brought up a hidden menu. On OS/2, it brings up menus for each object you click on. On Win95, it acts like the OS/2 right-click except it pretty much works on anything; window title bars, the Start Menu, any kind of icon, properties sheets, whatever. Win 3.1 programs run in a single process under Win95, cooperatively multitasking as they always did since Windows/386. This means one Win 3.1 app can suspend the entire Win 3.1 session. In fact, one Win 3.1 app can suspend all of Win95! This is purely for compatibility. ------------------------------ Subject: 3.2. Basic Win95 usage vs MS-DOS (TM) Microsoft kept DOS for compatibility and nothing else. Win95 includes MS-DOS 7.0, which under Win95, is a multitasking DOS. DOS programs run in protected sessions like Win95 programs do, and the system pre-emptively task-switches between Win32 sessions, DOS sessions, and the single Win 3.1 session. COMMAND.COM is now a multitasking command prompt. Win95 can unload it on command, unless a DOS program is running from it. Some Win32 character-based programs can run from here if they don't depend on Windows NT features. Outside of Win95 though, COMMAND.COM, and the rest of DOS, is just DOS. The biggest difference between old DOS and DOS 7.0, is it does not allow direct disk writes, to prevent long filename corruption and virus infection. Effectively, if a program tries to write to the disk directly while outside of Win95, you will get an evil message telling you to restart your computer. Normally this is good, but some "good" programs (like Windows 3.1 running 32-bit disk access, which DOES work in DOS 7.0 by the way) need to access the disk directly. If you can trust such programs, type: LOCK C: (or whatever drive letter) before running the program. Notice, however, that lock c: only works outside of Win95 (like when you "Restart the computer in MS-DOS mode" for example), and within Win95, no direct writes are allowed under any circumstance. Some DOS TSRs no longer supported under Explorer are print and subst (though subst seems to work in 32-bit mode once you finish installing Win95). As a general rule, don't run any DOS TSRs that fiddle with the disk handler or require direct access to hardware. 4.00.950B users will notice their DOS apps will report their DOS version as MS-DOS 7.10. This version of DOS supports FAT32 file systems. The "32" refers to the number of bits the File Allocation Table supports, and as such it can support smaller cluster sizes on larger (> 1 GB) drives. FAT32 file systems will not work with DOS utilities designed for older versions of DOS. DOS 7.10's scandisk does fix serious problems, and Win95 Defrag still does a great job of unfragmenting FAT32 drives. ------------------------------ Subject: 3.3. What is this "Explorer" thing? Like I wrote above, it's Win95's new default shell. Explorer actually has two big parts and several little ones. The two biggest parts you will see right away are the Desktop and the Taskbar. I won't go into details, because Microsoft has lots of basic stuff about these two devices. I will go into details on the little pieces, however. Microsoft combined the functionality of many utilities (including File Manager, Control Panel, Print Manager, Remote Access, Windows Setup, PIF editor) into it. Control Panel is pretty obvious and works much the way it did back in Win 3.1. The others were completely renamed and re-worked, and it'll just take some "Exploring" (pun intended) to learn them. Running explorer.exe with Explorer running will merely open a File Manager style window, with directory trees and split displays. "Exploring" directories like this is great for power users who need to find something fast. Right-click on any folder or drive and select "Explore" to begin "Exploring" from that point. You aren't running multiple processes of Explorer; you're merely opening another Explorer window separate from the Desktop. Print Manager got replaced by the Printers folder in "My Computer". You create and maintain printers here, though there is a shortcut to it from Control Panel, for compatibility. When you create printers here you may use Win 3.1 printer drivers (though I don't recommend this) or Win95 drivers. Microsoft claims NT drivers will install here as well, but I couldn't get any of the NT drivers working. Remote Access gets replaced by Dial-up Networking, which is now a general network connection through modems. Dial-up Networking covers regular RAS connections, Internet connections, and connections to NetWare Connect servers for remote NetWare log ins. Dial-up Networking also supports null modems and parallel port cables with Direct Cable Connection. Windows Setup is kinda scattered all over the place, but you'll find the main components in the Control Panel's Add New Hardware, Add/Remove Programs, and System panels. PIF files are now "Shortcuts to MS-DOS Programs", and you bring up a DOS program's properties to edit its PIF file. Check out How to run DOS programs in Win95 for details. ------------------------------ Subject: 3.4. How do I... * 3.4.1. ...find my old Win 3.x programs? Win95 Setup copied all your group files (.GRP) from Program Manager into a directory called (what else), "Start Menu". It copied the icon groups into little directories which you can view by pressing the Start button, and selecting "Programs". One notable exception to this, is Setup eliminated the "Main" program group entirely. It'll remove icons that no longer apply (like File Manager). If a program installer just copied a .GRP file to the hard disk, rather than add the icons through the Windows APIs like it's supposed to, you can add that group to the Start Menu by finding the .GRP file itself, and opening it (double-clicking it). If programs also try to change progman.ini, which contains the group listings, Win95 will move them to the Start Menu the next time you restart. * 3.4.2. ...make a program open a file I click on? Explorer lets you browse your hard drive and click on documents, as well as programs. This works exactly like clicking on documents in File Manager; simply double-click on the document to launch its associated app. If you click on a file with an extension it doesn't recognize, Explorer offers up a list of programs and lets you choose which one you want. You can also give a descriptive name to the file type (such as "Doom data file" for .WAD files). You may further edit the file type with the View/Options... menu in any Explorer window and selecting the "File Types" tab. * 3.4.3. ...change what program opens what kind of file? To edit file types, select the View menu and Options… in any Explorer window. Hit the "File types" tab and you can edit, add, or delete known file types. Some file types are hidden from this display (such as "System File") to keep you from hurting them. I'll tell you how to find them later. You can do much more than Open a document. Some document types have more options than Open if you right-click on them. For example, .BAT files have an "Edit" command which brings up Notepad. To add this functionality to your own documents, go back to the "File types" tab and find the file type you want to add this to, and hit Edit. You can then Add an action, such as "Edit", which launches a separate program and opens that file. This worked great for me; I have an "Edit" option added to all my HTML documents which launches MS-Word, an extra "Edit as Text" option to use Notepad instead, so I can remove the extra crap that Internet Assistant put in, and "Open" launches Mosaic to view the document. You can also use the File Types tab to disable CD Audio auto-play (by turning off "play" as its default action), hide or show extensions for particular file types, enable or disable QuickView (provided you installed QuickView in Add/Remove Programs / Windows Setup), and remove file types completely. * 3.4.3.1. How can I add or remove filename extensions from a file type? This is not immediately simple, but you can accomplish this two ways: 1. Run winfile.exe (File Manager) and use its Associate... menu to add extensions to an already existing file type. The file types in File Manager corespond with the file types you see in Explorer. I recommend this method. 2. Edit the Registry using regedit. You'll find all the filename extensions in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT along with the matching file types. Simply add a new key with the extension as its name (such as ".HTM") and change that key's (default) value so it contains the same name as the other extension's default value (such as "NetscapeHypertext"). You may also add a second String value named "Content Type" to specify a MIME type for this filename extension. In both cases, when you exit the respective program, press F5 to cause Explorer to refresh its display. All files with the new extension will change icons and properties to match the file type you assigned it. This also works in NT 4.0, but you will need to restart your computer to effect the change. * 3.4.4. ...run Windows 3.x programs? (including Windows games) If there's an icon in the Start Menu, you can run it from there. When you install apps in Win95 that create icons the "proper" way, Explorer will build up entries in the Start Menu. You can also find the executable itself by browsing the hard drive, then opening it. Self-installing archives, such as Win95 Service Pack 1, are one kind of Windows program you'll need to run by browsing and opening. If you don't see your old program group on the Start Menu, or if a program just copied a group file (.GRP) to the hard disk, just find the .GRP file it installed and Open it. This runs a converter that builds Shortcuts for the Start menu. Windows programs will even run from a DOS session under Win95. Type the name of the executable like you would for any DOS program. You can open documents from the DOS session with the start command (just like the Start Menu "Run" command). START MyDocument.doc will run Microsoft Word, and load MyDocument.doc into memory. A handful of Win 3.1 and Win 3.0 programs won't recognize that you have a newer version of Windows, and report an error like, "This program requires Windows 3.1 or better". Well, you have a "Setver" kind of workaround for such programs in Win95; the [Compatibility] section of win.ini. For example, to install Outpost 1.0 on Win95, you can edit win.ini so "INSTALL=00020000" instead of 00040000; that number is a Windows version reporting number. This will make INSTALL.EXE think it's running in Win 3.1. Later on, if the main program acts the same way, you can add entries to win.ini with that version ID that matches Win 3.1. A handful of entries exist already, for known programs. NOTE: Win95 will restore any changes you make to programs called INSTALL or SETUP in the [compatibility] section of win.ini. When you make your changes, do them from sysedit, and not from any other file editor, then run your installer. Win95 instantly changes the entry back to 00040000 after the program finishes installing. There's a cute utility for real dumb Win 3.1 programs; mkcompat.exe, in your Win95 directory. Run this program to turn on compatibility switches to make dumb programs work. This is a last resort, and I'd rather you insist the program's publisher fix it. * 3.4.4.1. ...install and run Windows 3.1 on a system now running Win95? If you installed Win95 in a separate directory (You smart person you), you can do a very cute trick: Hit Start/Shut Down... and "Restart computer in MS-DOS Mode". This will take you straight to a DOS prompt. From here, change to your Win 3.1 directory and just type win. This little trick works because Win95 DOS (DOS 7.0) already loaded the necessary himem.sys XMS driver, which is all Win 3.1 really needs to load. Performance will be poor, because there's no disk caching active at this time, and no fancy network stuff will probably work either, because you aren't using Win 3.1's version of IFSHLP. To get these working, check out the tricks used to run MS-DOS games and prepare special PIF files for, what MS calls, "Single mode MS-DOS". Be sure to include the Win 3.1 versions of ifshlp.sys, mscdex, and net start, and Win95 versions of other base drivers such as emm386. Also include lock c: to let 32-bit disk and file access work. * 3.4.4.2. How do I install Win 3.1 fresh in a Win95 system? First, Shut Down, and Re-start the computer in MS-DOS mode. If you have a config.sys or autoexec.bat file (Which you don't need really), copy these to a safe place. Next, insert your Win 3.1 setup disk 1 and run setup.exe from it. This performs a normal Win 3.1 or WFWG 3.11 install. When prompted for your Windows directory location, be EXTRA CAREFUL to use a different directory name than your Win95 installation!!!!!! Next, let Win 3.1 Setup proceed as normally. When it finishes, copy any changed config.sys and autoexec.bat it made up and save them with different file names, and restore the previous versions of these files. Next, return to Win95 by typing exit. Look for win.com in the Win 3.1 directory you installed it in, and right-click on it. Select "Properties". Then use the same techniques I mentioned above for setting up a special PIF file for Single Mode DOS. This way, you can specify a proper Win 3.1 startup sequence and avoid polluting your Win95 configuration. You can also use Win 3.1 versions of ifshlp, net, and mscdex as required. Now, when you launch this version of win.com from Win95, it will re-start your computer using that special configuration. When you exit Win 3.1, Win95 re-starts. * 3.4.5. ...run MS-DOS apps? You can either run a DOS session by hitting Start/Programs/MS-DOS Prompt and run the DOS program from there, or open it from Explorer. If it's a DOS program, Win95 will start a DOS session and load the program into it. NOTE: If you launch a DOS program from Explorer, it will create a PIF file for it (Also called a "Shortcut to MS-DOS Program"). If it can't write to the directory where the program resides, it will write the PIF file to %windir%\pif\. If you want to avoid making four hundred PIF files, run the MS-DOS Prompt first, then run the program within that session. It will use the program properties built into the default PIF (dosprmpt.pif) instead of making one. * 3.4.6. ...run MS-DOS utilities? (Xtree (TM), Norton Utilities (TM), etc) Like any other MS-DOS program, but avoid utilities that do direct disk writes, like DOS versions of SpeedDisk, Norton Disk Doctor, DiskEdit, etc as these won't work in DOS sessions, because Win95 won't let you perform direct disk writes in a DOS session. If you have to run utilities that access the disk directly (like sector editors), you must exit to DOS (Restart computer in MS-DOS mode) and lock the hard drive you will edit (lock c:). This will allow the direct disk access to work. Utilities to avoid include DOS versions of ScanDisk, Defrag, and all their cousins. Win95 comes with Windows version of these utilities that work with long filenames etc, and Peter Norton has Win95 versions of his utilities, too. 4.00.950B users should be extra careful not to use any utilities designed for previous DOS versions. Period. I don't know enough about FAT32 file systems to know what works and what doesn't, so I can't make any suggestions here. * 3.4.7. ...run MS-DOS games? I go into a whole whack of detail on this subject, but to make life real simple, run your games in DOS sessions under Win95, like you would any DOS application. A handful of useful Properties settings to turn on include, "Protected" (Memory tab), "Prevent DOS programs from detecting Windows" (Program tab/Advanced), "Full Screen" (Display), and "Always Suspend" (Misc). DOS games can work with protected mode CD-ROM, sound, and network drivers easily. All the real mode hooks are there. Basically, you don't need to load any DOS drivers for anything to make a game run. This includes CD-ROM games as these are looking for mscdex hooks to play CD Audio, and these exist in DOS sessions. One user reported that some DOS based Audio CD players won't work, but this is because they're trying to directly access a real mode CD-ROM driver rather than mscdex. The solution was to use a generic CD Audio player that used mscdex instead For more details, jump to the Running MS-DOS Games section. * 3.4.8. ...format and copy disks? Right-click on the floppy drive in "My Computer" and select "Format". To copy disks, right-click on the drive and select "Copy..." Don't forget that right mouse button. NOTE: Win95's smart enough to stop you from copying the new DMF disks (1.8 MB or whatever) and keep you from copying the commercial software that comes on it. So don't ask me how to pirate these disks. * 3.4.9. ...search for files? Explorer has a nifty file find tool built in. Right-click on where you want to start searching and select "Find…". You could also hit Start Menu/Find. You can search your entire computer (including floppy drives and net drives), or a single drive for a file. Type in the filename (or part of the filename) and hit Find. Wildcards (*, ?) are permitted but not required. Don't forget you're dealing with long filenames now, so keep spaces and other non-standard characters in mind. Use filenames in quotes (such as "Long file name for my document.doc") if they have spaces. You can search text within files, search for files with certain dates, certain sizes, even search for computers on a network. To do this, hit the Advanced tab and enter the text you're searching for. You can combine the properties of all three tabs to narrow your search and reduce searching time. * 3.4.10. ...add my own items to the Start Menu? The Start Menu's filled with shortcut files. The easiest way to add an item is to drag an icon on top of the Start button. This creates a shortcut in the root of the Start Menu. If you're a bit more selective on where you want to put the shortcut, right-click on any open Taskbar space and hit Properties. Select "Start Menu Programs" and you can add or remove items. The Shortcut Wizard helps you find the item you want to make a shortcut to. For the ultimate control over the Start Menu, right-click on the Start button and hit Open or Explore, and the drag shortcuts and folders around at will. * 3.4.10.1. The Desktop, Start Menu, and shortcuts The Desktop and Start Menu are directories on your hard drive, filled with .LNK files, or Shortcuts. They may also have regular files in them, but Start Menu items have to be .LNK or .PIF files. If you right-click on the Start button, you can Open the Start Menu like any other disk directory and move stuff around. NOTE on .LNK, .PIF, and .URL files: Win95 hides these extensions always, regardless of your "Hide all extensions" settings. If you want to change such an extension you'll need to do so from a DOS prompt. * 3.4.11. ...change my display resolution? Right-click on any empty Desktop space and select "Properties". You can change the wallpaper, screen saver, appearance of windows, and display mode. If you change display resolution without changing the colour depth, Win95 will re-size the desktop and ask you if it's OK to use it. If you change the display's colour depth (like 8-bit to 16-bit for example) Win95 will restart. Many advanced display drivers (such as ATI's DirectX Drivers) will add extra tabs to this properties sheet. Take advantage of them. Still others (like Diamond's S3 drivers) will let you change display depth (number of colours) without rebooting. Unlike Win 3.1 drivers however, these utilities use hooks in Win95 set aside by Microsoft for this purpose. Get a proper Win95 display driver to take advantage without damaging your system. * 3.4.12. ...change my display driver? In Display Properties, select the settings tab. Hit the "Change Display Type" button. This will let you change the video driver and monitor driver. * 3.4.13. ...disable the "Full window drag" feature of MS Plus? Microsoft Plus' "Display Enhancements" are a bit of a processor hog. You can turn off the Full Window Drag by hitting the "Plus" tab in Display Properties, and just turning it off. ------------------------------ Subject: 3.5. Some MS-DOS utilities are missing. Where can I get them? You might be looking for qbasic or some other item from DOS 6 missing here. These are available on the CD-ROM version. They're in \other\oldmsdos\, and you'll find a batch file that will copy them to your %windir%\command\ directory. After a reboot they'll be available. You need to reboot because these are direct copies of DOS 6.22 programs, and the batch file SETVER's them to that version. If you installed Win95 on top of old DOS, your DOS directory will still be in your path, and you can run the old DOS utilities without having to install them from the CD-ROM. Setup already added them to the SETVER table. ------------------------------ Subject: 3.6. Should I buy these new fancy utilities for Win95? * 3.6.1. ...Norton Navigator (TM) ? If you used Norton Desktop you'll instantly miss FileAssist and those cool toys. I suppose it's OK, but a system running Navigator requires more RAM than Win95's Explorer does by itself. Expect additional disk swapping after installing this. New users should just try Explorer for a while first. There's no real point to buying a shell extension when you don't know how to use the default shell. After all, why would Microsoft spend so much time developing this interface, only to have you buy enhancements for it? Such shell extenders are really for power users only. * 3.6.2. ...uninstallers? A must-have, if you run many old Win 3.1 programs. Make sure you obtain a Designed for Windows 95 version; Win 3.1 uninstallers don't recognize the Registry, where Win95 stores most of its configuration info. Be very careful of installing Win95 programs with such an uninstaller active. Designed for Win95 apps include their own uninstaller, and if you use the utility's uninstaller instead of the program's own, the uninstaller can remove more than it's supposed to. It could also remove less. CleanSweep 95 (TM), for example, warns you to this effect. Heed that warning! The publishers of uninstallers are preying on the fear of new Win95 users that they HAVE to use a "professional uninstaller" for even Designed for 95 apps. Get serious. If a program can't uninstall itself it doesn't deserve the logo. Complain to them, or to Microsoft, who awarded the logo rights to them. * 3.6.3. ...anti-virus programs? Again, Designed for Windows 95 is the key. Otherwise, run the anti-virus software outside of Win95. * 3.6.4. ...Microsoft Plus (TM) ? Also a must-have, if you have a fast machine. System Agent makes up most of the purchase price by itself, running maintenance programs like ScanDisk and Defrag unattended. The other cool stuff that comes with it are for power users only, though its web browser will get you started on The Internet with minimal fuss. Later on you can install Netscape Navigator or MS Internet Explorer 2.0, or even NCSA Mosaic like me, to replace this cheap web browser. 4.00.950B users should turn off the DriveSpace 3 and Internet Tools from MS Plus's setup, because the 950B versions are newer (MSIE 3.0 and DriveSpace 3). * 3.6.5. ...RAM compression programs? Yeah right. Build Washboard Abs in three weeks. "I was a 98 pound weakling until I installed SoftRAM 95." RAM compression only works when there's a defined API for accessing data RAM, as there is a defined API for accessing disks, and there is no such thing in Win95. At least, there's no way to regulate how the program accesses any RAM it allocates. Save yourself the hundreds of dollars of invested time and buy more RAM instead. These programs were great for Win 3.1, where they fixed inadequacies in the operating system. Win95 has considerably more horsepower by itself, but it thrives on a 16 MB system for running the big mainstream apps. MS Works 4.0, however, will run on an 8 MB system effortlessly. Try the techniques in Swap file & caching theory to speed up the system and run more programs. If you really need the power to run 100 programs at once, buy a big computer and install Windows NT, which will run all the Win95 apps anyway. Then you'll have no resource limitations, no swap file limitations, in fact, no DOS limitations. * 3.6.6. ...crash-proofing utilities? Fear mongering fuels the sales of utilities that promise to keep your system crash-proof. Here's my own analysys of some of their claims: 1. "Stops programs from crashing so you can save your work." OK, I can buy this one. Only trouble is, what state is your work in during mid-crash? 2. "Warns you in advance of HD failures." So can ScanDisk if you run it daily (Buy MS Plus for 1/2 the price of some of these utilities and get a lot more!) 3. "Takes the risk out of adding new programs and cards." So does the Designed for Windows 95 logo. Speaking of which, how many of these crash-proofing utilities bear the logo? I can count them without any fingers. :-) 4. "Your personal 24-hour a day expert." Just read this FAQ and others. I can also refute a lot of these claims with two words: "Broken Computer." If your computer is in such a state that it's constantly crashing, your HD's failing, and you can't add new cards or software, it's probably broken. A visit to your service centre with warranty slip in hand will probably cost a lot less than one of these packages. ------------------------------ Subject: 3.7. Top ten mistakes running Windows 3.x programs 10. Installing a Win 3.1 uninstaller 9. Installing a Win 3.1 communications program (replacing Win95 COMM.DRV) 8. Installing a Win 3.1 utility pack 7. USING a Win 3.1 utility pack 6. Installing a Win 3.1 app that replaces core system files 5. Installing a Win 3.1 backup program, especially since Win95 backup programs are here for FREE 4. Installing Norton Desktop for Win 3.1 and expecting it to work 3. Installing a RAM compression program for Win95 2. Installing a RAM compression program for Win 3.1 1. USING a RAM compression program for Win 3.1 ------------------------------ Subject: 3.8. Top ten mistakes running MS-DOS programs and games 10. Loading ctmmsys.sys (SB16 driver) in Win95 because a game manual said to do it 9. Loading mscdex.exe in Win95 because a game manual said to do it 8. Making a boot disk before realizing how .PIF files work, because a game manual said to do it (I think you get it by now) 7. Installing QEMM 8.0 (or any version) just because you can't get one game to work 6. Adding emm386.exe to config.sys before learning how PIF files work 5. Letting a "techie" friend add emm386.exe (or any other real mode driver) 4. Letting a "techie" friend make your game work before he reads this FAQ 3. Running Norton SpeedDisk 6.0 and forgetting you have long filenames now! 2. Making a boot disk for a game before seeing the "Prevent DOS programs from detecting Windows" switch, or before specifying a special DOS config for that program 1. Running Win95 with a host of DOS drivers and memory managers. (Get Win95 drivers for your stuff and make Win95 perform like Win95!) Subject: 4. Making your hardware work * 4.1. Device Manager basics * 4.2. Does Plug & Play work on systems without a Plug & Play BIOS? * 4.3. How do I make this card work... + 4.3.1. ...sound card o 4.3.1.1. Sound Blaster (tm), SB Pro, SB16, AWE32 (tm) o 4.3.1.2. Sound Blaster 16 Plug & Play o 4.3.1.3. Clone sound cards listed with Windows 95 o 4.3.1.4. Clone sound cards that need DOS drivers to run o 4.3.1.5. sound card NOT listed with Windows 95 + 4.3.2. ...network card o 4.3.2.1. card listed with Windows 95 o 4.3.2.2. card NOT listed with Windows 95 o 4.3.2.3. Using old ODI drivers with Win95 o 4.3.2.4. Using old NDIS2 drivers with Win95 o 4.3.2.5. Using some DMA network cards on machines with more than 16 MB + 4.3.3. ...scanner card + 4.3.4. ...caching IDE or caching SCSI card + 4.3.5. More on setting DMA properties to make old cards work * 4.4. How do I make this drive work... + 4.4.1. ...CD-ROM drives o 4.4.1.1. Using DOS drivers (Avoid at all costs!) + 4.4.2. …Flash PC card or hardcard for a notebook computer? + 4.4.3. ...tape drives o 4.4.3.1. SCSI tape drives o 4.4.3.2. Non-SCSI tape drives (Floppy, parport, FC-20, whatever) + 4.4.4. ...removable drive * 4.5. How do I make this input device work... + 4.5.1. ...un-listed mouse o 4.5.1.1. How can I use the middle mouse button on Logitech (or similar) mice? + 4.5.2. ...graphics tablet + 4.5.3. ...MIDI keyboard * 4.6. How do I fix hardware conflicts? * 4.7. How do I get a list of what card is using what IRQ? (or whatever) + 4.7.1. Help with devices that use IRQ 2 or IRQ 9 * 4.8. How do I tell Win95 about cards it doesn't have drivers for? * 4.9. Using "Safe Mode" to fix hardware problems * 4.10. Basic ISA Plug & Play theory (Don't bother if you don't like details) * 4.11. Basic PCI Plug & Play theory (Don't bother also) * 4.12. Other PnP theory (SCSI, monitors, printers, PCMCIA, etc) * 4.13. Top ten hardware mistakes ------------------------------ Subject: 4.1. Device Manager basics Right-clicking on "My Computer" and selecting "Properties" brings up a properties sheet for the whole computer, including all hardware. You find the hardware info on the Device Manager tab. Device Manager is Hardware Central on Win95. Because PC hardware is an absolute pain to configure, Win95 tries to show you how your hardware's set up here. To get the settings for a particular piece of hardware, find it in the Device Manager and double-click on it. Hit the "resources" tab to get the list of its settings. Normally you can't modify settings for a particular device, but some drivers let you make changes. Still other drivers will let you make changes that take immediate effect when you hit "OK", without re-starting the computer. Not all devices show up here, however. Only hardware devices with Win95 drivers will appear here. Devices with Win 3.1 drivers, pure software devices (like video codecs or PC speaker sound drivers), and DOS real mode drivers will not show up here. If you use such drivers, Device Manager cannot avoid hardware conflicts. Get Win95 drivers for your stuff, or dump your hardware in favor of devices with Win95 support. Save yourself the headaches. Or just check out How to reserve resources if you just have to use the old stuff. Also, "The Meteor" (http://www.powerup.com.au/~meteor/) took some time to write up a PC hardware FAQ that answers many more questions than this page does. ------------------------------ Subject: 4.2. Does Plug & Play work on systems without a Plug & Play BIOS? Yes it does, amazingly. Win95 will assume the role of PnP manager if your system does not have a PnP BIOS. This is actually advantageous, because BIOS authors haven't gotten the idea down pat yet. Early Award BIOSes, for example, don't work with SB16 PnP boards, or boards with Crystal's CS4232 sound chipset, because these devices have multiple resource needs that these BIOSes can't handle. Other bugs include locating PnP network boards on top of Joystick ports. Whose BIOS does work, then? If you have a board with Intel's Triton chipset, visit www.mrbios.com. Try to get a non-PnP BIOS for your MB if you have troubles. Phoenix and Intel worked pretty close together to straighten it out. AMI's pretty good with modern boards. For Award, get a newer BIOS from your PC's manufacturer. ------------------------------ Subject: 4.3. How do I make this card work... * 4.3.1. ...sound card * 4.3.1.1. Sound Blaster (TM), SB Pro, SB16, AWE32 (TM) Simple. Plug it in and load Win95 drivers, or run Add New Hardware. One thing Win95's really good at finding is original Creative Labs hardware. To make DOS games run in DOS sessions, you might need to change the card's settings to "traditional" settings: I/O port 220-22F, I/O port 388-38B, IRQ 5, DMA 1, DMA 5. Win95 tends to allocate odd resources to SB16s. To avoid this, make sure those resources are available, including freeing them in your BIOS setup if you have such an option. A stock SB16's "Basic Configuration 6" exposes all the SB16's on board hardware, including both DMA channels, the OPL3 synth port, and the MIDI port. * 4.3.1.2. Sound Blaster 16 Plug & Play Plug & Pray is more like it. The PnP manager will have problems configuring this card if its "preferred resources" aren't available. Try to free up the standard I/O, Interrupt, and DMA values a Sound Blaster normally uses: A220, I5, D1, H5 (DMA 5). If you use an Award BIOS be sure to set those resources as "No/ICU" or otherwise available for use. You can hand-edit the resource settings from Device Manager if necessary. Non PnP systems will work with the SB16 PnP card, because Win95 will allocate resources the card can actually use. Whatever you do, do not install Creative's PnP Manager software on a Win95 system. That DOS/Win 3.1 PnP Manager is for systems running good ol' DOS. You will need the DOS PnP Manager for setting up Single Mode DOS programs, where you specify a new DOS configuration for the game, however. Try not to let the PnP manager installer add anything to your Windows directory; you can specify this when you install the PnP Manager by changing the Windows directory choice to "None". NOTE: Creative's newest PnP sound cards come with a whole slew of sound utilities that replicate many of Win95's built-in programs! This is a waste of disk space. For example, you try to use Creative's CD player, you insert an Audio CD, and Win95's CD Player auto-runs. * 4.3.1.3. Clone sound cards listed with Windows 95 Microsoft included quite a list of weird chipsets in Win95's sound support, and most of the Windows Sound System clones offer Sound Blaster emulation in DOS sessions! The list currently includes: * Thunder Boards * Media Vision (Pro Audio Spectrum) * Windows Sound System (Analog Devices 1448 and Compaq (TM) Business Audio) * ESS 688 and 488 * 4.3.1.4. Clone sound cards that need DOS drivers to run Only SB16 class cards actually need "DOS drivers" to operate, or at least, they're the only ones that actually stay resident when you load them. Other cards (Mozart class cards for example) will work with Win95's SB Pro drivers, or Windows Sound System drivers But if you have a card that won't work with SB drivers, or it supposedly requires DOS drivers, here's what to do. I'll use Oak Mozart class cards as an example, as this works perfectly with Mozart cards: 1. Install the card software, and be sure NOT to install Windows support for the card. Just to be sure, back up SYSTEM.INI before installing the software. 2. Reboot the computer, but hit F8 on "Starting Windows 95..." and select "Command Prompt Only". This runs through your normal DOS startup without actually running Win95. 3. Type MEM /C, and compare this module listing with the files in the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT that the sound software modified. Do any of the resulting files remain resident? In the case of Mozart class cards, they will not remain resident. If the sound software modified SYSTEM.INI, restore it with the backup you made. 4. If no files remain resident, reboot and let Win95 run. Then install drivers for the SB Pro, or Windows Sound System, depending on what the card emulates. Re-boot and see if sound works. Here's what's happening: The DOS "drivers" load and initialize the sound card. Once this initialization is done, it will operate like a regular SB or WSS card, and you can use Win95 drivers for SB or WSS. This technique also works for CD-ROM support; if you let the sound card "driver" initialize the card, then install Win95 support for whatever CD-ROM card it emulates, it will work without having to load DOS CD-ROM drivers for it. DirectX and 4.00.950B users will want to use this capability, because your sound card manufacturer might've not made DirectSound drivers for that card yet. OPTi's 82C9xx cards for example, DO have Win95 drivers, but don't support DirectSound yet. Using their SNDINIT program, alongside a Sound Blaster Pro DirectSound driver, works around this problem rather nicely. * 4.3.1.5. Sound card NOT listed with Windows 95 Cards not listed with Win95 will 90% work with Microsoft's SB Pro or Windows Sound System drivers. WSS cards will even work with DOS games in DOS sessions, if you enable Sound Blaster emulation. Still other cards, like Crystal's CS4232, do SB emulation in hardware, at the same time as WSS. See the previous section on using initialization "drivers", which will let you use Win95's SB Pro or WSS drivers with your unlisted sound card. * 4.3.2. ...network card? Win95 introduces a new version of Network Device Interface Spec (NDIS) 3.1. NDIS 3.1 allows for PnP events, such as activating network clients when you insert a PCMCIA card. Win95 comes with quite a handful of NDIS 3.1 drivers for many cards, and I'll cover them first. I also go into a whole mess of network stuff in another section. * 4.3.2.1. Net card listed with Windows 95 If a card is listed in Win95's built in driver list, it has an NDIS 3.1 driver. Most of the time, Add New Hardware will detect it and install a driver for it. If not, you can manually add the driver from the list. On occasion, Win95 will goof on its first resource choices, but as it tells you, you can immediately run Device Manager to correct it. Most of the supplied drivers include a DOS (NDIS 2) driver as well as the NDIS 3.1 driver. This driver lets you run the card in Single Mode DOS by typing net start redir or net start nwredir from a DOS prompt. * 4.3.2.2. Net card NOT listed with Windows 95 Of course, no hardware maker should be in the DOS box business these days without Win95 drivers. Check with them first. Otherwise, Win95 will use NDIS 2.0 or ODI drivers if you're stuck. Both options sit below. * 4.3.2.3. Using old ODI drivers with Win95 Life stinks sometimes; too many card makers believe only Novell does PC networks. Ahh well. Real mode ODI drivers will work with Win95 protected mode protocols and drivers, as Novell designed ODI to work with NDIS protocols and clients. You need three real mode TSRs to use a network card with an ODI driver: LSL.COM (Comes with the net card) The net card driver itself (Referred to as an MLID) ODIHLP.EXE (Comes with Win95) You also need to install the "Existing ODI driver" using Add New Hardware, or Network control panel. Adding the "Existing ODI Driver" will install odihlp.exe, needed to link the real mode ODI drivers with NDIS 3.1. Finally, you need to write a net.cfg file for the ODI support. NDIS on top of ODI only works with Ethernet and Token-Ring (If you know of others please tell me!) ArcNet will not work in this configuration, but Win95 comes with a generic ArcNet driver for NDIS 3.1. You also need to specify all the frame types your adapter type can handle, for example: link driver 3c5x9 frame ethernet_802.2 frame ethernet_802.3 frame ethernet_snap frame ethernet_ii Some NDIS protocols require the weird frame types. In particular, TCP/IP requires ETHERNET_II. Copy this net.cfg to the same directory where you keep lsl.com and the net card driver itself (Stick them in your Win95 directory for convenience). * 4.3.2.4. Using old NDIS2 drivers with Win95 Like ODI support, Win95 will use real mode NDIS 2.0 drivers as well, but this eats significant amounts of conventional memory; even more than ODI drivers use! To use an NDIS 2.0 driver, you use Add New Hardware as before, and tell it where to find the NDIS 2 driver. You can configure the card like any other NDIS 3.1 card, but Win95 will add this line to autoexec.bat: net start This will load the DOS protocol manager and the xxxxx.dos net card driver into conventional memory. When win.com loads, it will load the NDIS 2 protected mode helper and start the network. NDIS 2 driver info will appear in The Registry, and should also appear in protocol.ini for compatibility. You can hand-edit protocol.ini as you normally would for NDIS 2 drivers, and Win95 will apply these changes the next time it re-starts. Some NDIS 2 drivers exist in \drivers\netcard on the Win95 CD-ROM, so check there if you don't see your card listed. Also check out Microsoft's Win95 driver library. * 4.3.2.5. Using some DMA net cards on machines with more than 16 MB memory Some token-ring cards and maybe a few Ethernet cards need to use an ISA DMA channel to off-load CPU time. If your computer has more than 16 MB memory, it can hang the computer, because Win95 will attempt to DMA into memory that the net card can't reach. ISA slots only have 24 address lines (to access 16 MB). To make these cards work, run Device Manager and find the "Direct Memory Access Controller" driver in System Devices. In its settings, turn on "Allow DMA into first 16 MB only". This switch will also work for other DMA devices in case the driver doesn't already account for this. * 4.3.3. ...scanner card? If you own an HP scanner you're in luck; HP designed Win95 versions of their TWAIN scanner interface software. Download it from http://www.hp.com/. HP's TWAIN currently depends on Advanced SCSI Programming Interface, so you need a Win95 driver for your SCSI host adapter to use it. Non-SCSI scanners can work with the Win 3.1 software provided for it, but try to avoid loading real mode scanner drivers just to make your cheap hand scanner work. Don't waste your time. It may be possible to find a Win95 TWAIN driver for your non-SCSI scanner; ask the manufacturer. Check out Epson's home page (http://www.epson.com) for Win95 versions of TWAIN for their Action Scanner and ES series scanners. These support their SCSI and Parallel Port scanners. Again you'll need a Win95 driver for your SCSI card, as Epson's TWAIN requires ASPI as well. 4.00.950B users can take advantage of the Imaging components that come with it. These components include "thunk" layers between 16-bit scanners and 32-bit apps, and a simple image editor that uses your scanner. * 4.3.4. ...caching IDE or caching SCSI card? Promise Technology (http://www.promise.com/techsupp.html) has Win95 versions of its Caching IDE host adapter drivers, so be sure to grab them. Tekram (http://www.tekram.com/drivers/) will also have drivers for its IDE caching adapter, but the SCSI caching adapter should work with Adaptec 1540 drivers if they didn't get around to writing Win95 SCSI drivers yet. Most of the time, the standard IDE drivers will work with caching IDE cards, though they won't take advantage of the card's cache. If you do manage to get a Win95 caching IDE driver, try to set Win95's own cache to bare minimum (384 KB) so you make good use of your controller's cache instead. Edit your system.ini's [vcache] section: [vcache] maxfilecache=384 Then it will almost solely rely on the controller's cache and free up valuable memory for your programs. * 4.3.5. More on setting DMA properties to make old cards work While Win95 will honor settings you make in system.ini for things like DMABufferSize, I tend to prefer keeping system.ini clean to ease troubleshooting. In Device Manager, find the "Direct Memory Access Controller" in System Devices. Here you may specify the DMA buffer size and wether or not Win95 will allow DMA above the 16 MB memory area. This switch is for hardware that uses ISA DMA to directly access memory, but prevents the device from trying to DMA into memory above 16 MB (the limit of the 24 address lines on the ISA bus). This switch will not affect VESA or PCI Bus Master devices, as they don't require ISA DMA channels. NOTE: A Win95 driver for an ISA DMA device should be smart enough not to try to DMA into memory above 16 MB by design. For example, SCSI drivers written by Adaptec and sound card drivers will allocate buffers below 16 MB regardless of how you set these switches. As a result you shouldn't have to mess with them. ------------------------------ Subject: 4.4. How do I make this drive work... * 4.4.1. CD-ROM drives I know of three classes of CD-ROM devices in Win95: IDE: These work off standard IDE adapters if you have Win95 drivers for the IDE cards. Just plug and play, like you're supposed to. No fancy CD-ROM controller drivers. And yes, you CAN use an IDE CD-ROM and hard drive on the same cable, and still get 32-bit access on both devices. The IDE miniport driver takes care of the gory details. CD-ROM drives alone on a secondary adapter must be a Master drive; ATAPI spec demands there be a Master device on each IDE adapter to work properly. Grab Microsoft's IOS.VXD Update (ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/iosupd.exe) if you're having trouble playing videos etc off an IDE CD-ROM. SCSI: Win95 works best with SCSI-II CD-ROM drives, regardless of your host adapter type. Just get Win95 drivers for the SCSI card and let ASPI find it. CD-ROM Jukeboxes even work quite well, though some SCSI-I jukeboxes will have troubles. Otherwise, PnP works well here, too. SCSI is the way to go for many such devices in the same computer. There's an update for some CD-ROM Jukeboxes (ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/cdchnger.exe) available if you have troubles. Proprietary: These include the Mitsumi, Sony CDU-3xx, Matsushita (Panasonic/AT) interfaces. These require a CD-ROM miniport driver specially designed for the card and the drive combination you have! For example: You can't use a TEAC CD-ROM with a SB Pro CD-ROM card driver; you have to use a TEAC driver designed for the SB Pro card and TEAC drive. Proprietary interfaces include those built into sound cards; most of the time they emulate one of these three proprietary CD-ROM cards, and you can use a Win95 driver. * 4.4.1.1. Using DOS CD-ROM drivers (Avoid at all costs!) You only need to use a DOS CD-ROM driver if you exit Win95. This includes the "Restart Computer in DOS mode" option, where you can't play a game in a DOS session under Win95. Look here in FAQ page 12 for details on how to do this properly. If you find you need a DOS CD-ROM driver to use the drive in Win95, then the drive's broken. See the dealer or manufacturer to get it fixed or get a Win95 driver for it. I find that real mode CD-ROM drivers in Win95 are very unreliable. * 4.4.2. ...Flash PC card or hardcard for a notebook computer? To make the Flash card work, just insert it! Provided you installed Win95 drivers for your notebook's PC card slots, it will mount it and assign a drive letter to it. To make Win95 support PC cards in protected mode, run the PC Card control panel. The first time you run this, it offers to install 32-bit support. Let it do so! It will also remove any real mode and Win 3.1 drivers it recognizes, but for weird PC card software you might need to do some trimming afterwards. Just hide or delete your DOS startup files, and trim off any unusual entries in system.ini. File system notes: PC card users told be about some third-party Flash file systems that require DOS PC card drivers to use. I'd just say, don't waste your time with these non-standard file systems and use good ol' FAT. * 4.4.3. tape drives Microsoft's backup program only works with cheap tape devices, like the floppy port and parallel port tape drives. If you have one of these then just use the built in backup program. For other kinds of drives, see below. * 4.4.3.1. SCSI tape drives Colorado Memory Systems, who wrote the MS Backup for Win95, was kind enough to release a version that works with more tape devices. Download Colorado Backup and install it, for a Win95 tape drive subsystem that supports SCSI tape drives. Get excellent speed and reliability with this software and SCSI tape drives. Adaptec includes tape backup software with EZ-SCSI 4.0. It is a veritable clone of HP's Colorado Backup for Win95. * 4.4.3.2. Non-SCSI tape drives (Floppy, parport, FC-20, whatever) If you own a Colorado non-SCSI tape drive, Download Colorado Backup 1.51. Version 1.51 also handles TRAVAN parallel port drives and floppy based drives attached to an FC-10 or FC-20 controller card. Non-Colorado customers should ask their manufacturer for Win95 versions of their software. For example: Arcada (http://www.arcada.com/ds-win95.htm) supports Conner floppy-based tape drives. The reason behind this is Colorado's tape drivers will FIND non-Colorado drives, but the backup program will blatantly ignore them. Ahh... what do you want for free? Conner also has a basic Win 3.1 version of Backup EXEC patched to support Win95 long filenames and Registry back-ups; check with your tape drive dealer for a free update. Microsoft's built in back-up program works with old cheap QIC-40 and QIC-80 class devices attached to a floppy port or parallel port, and you won't really get a performance boost with third-party software here anyway. * 4.4.4. ...removable drive? SCSI is your best, and in some cases, your only choice for removable drives. Just get a good Win95 compatible SCSI adapter and you can pick & choose between many optical, SyQuest, floptical, whatever... drives. The SCSI driver will find and mount any such devices it finds, though some disks require partitioning. You can't partition removable disks using FDISK, but Adaptec released their EZ-SCSI software for Win95, which includes a removable disk partitioner. EZ-SCSI 4.0 will work on pretty much any SCSI adapter, because Win95 has ASPI support built in. Non-Adaptec owners can buy it. Adaptec's WFDISK (Windows disk partitioner) for Win 3.1 will work too, as it uses ASPI. ------------------------------ Subject: 4.5. How do I make this input device work... * 4.5.1. ...unlisted mouse? Use the Standard mouse driver. Win95 has three standard drivers for three different mouse ports; serial, PS/2, and Bus. The Bus Mouse driver will work with mice plugged into an ATI Graphics Ultra card. Since no one designs mice for something other than these three connectors, you're probably better off getting a replacement mouse if it doesn't work with Win95. For $10.00 you can find a good serial mouse. * 4.5.1.1. How can I use the middle mouse button on Logitech (or similar) mice? Win95 supports the third button as long as the mouse driver does. Use Logitech's latest mouse driver (7.1) for Win95 to enable third mouse button support. However, the applications need to LOOK for it. Currently, the only Win95 app that uses the middle button is DOOM95 by id Software. * 4.5.2. ...graphics tablet? Both SummaGraphics (http://www.summagraphics.com/ftpinfo/ftpinfo.html) and CalComp (http://www.calcomp.se/ftp-e.htm) have Win95 versions of the WINTAB interface, for their tablets. For other tablets you should see about switching them to emulate a Summa or CalComp tablet, or check with your manufacturer. As more pointing device makers write Windows NT support, Win95 support will increase. Many tablets work alongside of mice; when you move the mouse, motion is relative, and when you move the tablet motion is absolute, depending on the range of tablet you calibrated your screen to. * 4.5.3. ...MIDI keyboard? Load a Win95 driver for your MIDI interface, and use the same Win 3.1 software you used before, to record your MIDI keystrokes and other events. Win95's Sound Blaster drivers support MIDI through the joystick port, and MPU 401 compatible cards will work with the MPU 401 driver. Microsoft also included an MT-32 driver. ------------------------------ Subject: 4.6. How do I fix hardware conflicts? Device Manager is your best tool for resolving conflicts. To run Device Manager, right-click on "My computer" and hit "Properties", then hit the Device Manager tab. Any device that failed to start will have a (!) identifier with it, indicating some kind of failure. Bringing up properties for that device will go into the details. If your card causes a hardware conflict, you can adjust its settings with the Resources tab. If your card uses jumpers, you will need to power off the computer and adjust them, before the device will work. If it is a software configurable device, adjusting the resources may allow the device to start up without having to re-start the computer. Sound cards often react like this. You might have a resource conflict with a real-mode driver, or a Win 3.1 driver. These you can't resolve using Device Manager, but you can tell Device Manager to reserve resources for such devices. Double-click on "Computer" in Device Manager, and you can view all resources in use, or reserve resources for non-Win95 drivers. Reserving memory resources this way works like EMMExclude= lines in system.ini. * 4.7.1. Help with devices that use IRQ 2 or IRQ 9 Quick background... The first PC compatibles (XTs and 8088s) made interrupt lines 2 to 7 available for ISA cards. IRQ 2 was marked as "reserved" but was still available for developers. This was handy to have because if you had a floppy drive (IRQ 6), two serial ports (IRQs 3 and 4), and two printer ports (IRQs 5 and 7), you were kinda stuck with IRQ 2. MIDI devices are the most common devices that used IRQ 2. ATs and better added a second interrupt controller (The interrupt controller you see in Device Manager is really two interrupt controllers cascaded) and the second controller used IRQ 2 to indicate an interrupt occured on a line from IRQs 8 to 15. (Remember that IBM "reserved" IRQ 2? Now you know why.) To maintain compatibilty with devices that used IRQ 2, ATs wired IRQ 9 in place of IRQ 2 on the bus. Whenever you install an 8-bit card that allows you to use IRQ 2, you're really using IRQ 9. This wasn't enough because those MIDI programs wouldn't understand what IRQ 9 was. Every incarnation of DOS, from 2.0 up to 6.22, would cascade IRQ 9 events to the IRQ 2 handler so these old programs would work. Guess what? Win95 no longer does this. To use devices that allow IRQ 2, set that driver's setting to use IRQ 9 instead. The MPU-401 MIDI driver defaults to using IRQ 9, for example. If you add an 8-bit internal modem to a system that has two serial ports and a sound card, you should use IRQ 9 to avoid conflicts with the other ports. "Basic Configuratrion 5" for a serial port lets you select IRQ 9. Don't even try to use DOS software that attempts to use "IRQ 2" because it simply won't work. ------------------------------ Subject: 4.7. How do I get a list of what card is using what IRQ? (or whatever) Bring up Device Manager and double-click on "Computer". This will let you view IRQs and other resources in use by Win95 drivers. You can also hit Print... on the Device Manager sheet, which will print a whole "MSD" style report of hardware resources in use. ------------------------------ Subject: 4.8. How do I tell Win95 about cards it doesn't have drivers for? Bring up Device Manager and double-click on "Computer". Hit the "Reserve Resources" tab, and tell it which IRQs, DMA channels, etc are in use by non-Win95 drivers. Reserving memory like this works just like excluding addresses in EMM386, or using EMMExclude= in system.ini. You MUST do this if you use real mode drivers or Win 3.1 drivers that Win95 can't recognize, otherwise when you install a PnP device it may try to allocate the used resources to the new device! ------------------------------ Subject: 4.9. Using "Safe Mode" to fix hardware problems Safe Mode is a debugging mode which allows you to fix problems without loading the offending drivers. You should not have to run Safe Mode for any other purpose, in fact you can't run any big applications, except Device Manager, while in there. ScanDisk works in Safe Mode, but it takes much longer to perform disk checks. To start your computer in Safe Mode, hit F8 on "Starting Windows 95...", then select Safe Mode from the choices. This option automatically comes up if you interrupt Win95's boot up process, or it freezes up or otherwise fails to start. Also, while in Safe Mode, Device Manager cannot tell you about resource conflicts, because the drivers didn't load. You might also notice drivers for hardware you don't have; they will appear if there were remnant Registry entries for them. These driver-remnants are good candidates for removal! ------------------------------ Subject: 4.10. Basic ISA Plug & Play theory (Don't bother if you don't like details) A PnP BIOS keeps a record of resources in use through a Non-Volatile RAM (NVRAM), usually part of its Flash BIOS EEPROM. When you add a device, Win95 tells the BIOS to add the resources in use to this list. A BIOS must have these calls available to Win95 or it will never know about what the OS added or reserved. The NVRAM is not the same as CMOS RAM, which makes me wonder why they don't just replace the CMOS with NVRAM for storing other settings, like lost hard drive parameters. Also, when you install a PnP device, the BIOS polls it for the resources it requires. The PnP device will have "Preferred", "Acceptable", and "Marginal" operating resource requirements. The BIOS will assign resources based on what the device can use, and record the resources used in its NVRAM. Win95 can ask the BIOS what resources are in use, and it can ask the BIOS if any new devices exist, which is when you get the "Windows has found new hardware..." message. On a Non-PnP system, Win95 handles all PnP requests by itself and stores config info in the Registry. Buggy BIOSes might not handle cards with multiple devices on it. If you think you have a buggy BIOS, see about disabling its PnP features and let Win95 take over as PnP manager. In this condition, Win95 stores all resources in use in its Registry and polls PnP cards by itself. ------------------------------ Subject: 4.11. Basic PCI Plug & Play theory (Don't bother also) PCI was Plug & play by design. A PCI BIOS will assign resources, but the PCI cards don't care what resources they get. Often, the PCI cards end up in unusual I/O spaces (like above the 3FF range of the original XT). Some PCI cards have hard-wired resource requirements (like video cards), but the newest video cards are beginning to wean off that requirement, as games stop depending on VGA and use DirectDraw under Win95. Cases include the on-board video that some SIS motherboard chipsets provide. As per ISA PnP, The BIOS keeps its PCI config info in its NVRAM, and Win95 keeps a copy in the Registry. ------------------------------ Subject: 4.12. Other PnP theory (SCSI, monitors, printers, PCMCIA, etc) SCSI: Supposedly you can power-on a SCSI device while you computer is running, and Win95 will enumerate and mount it instantly! OK, not entirely. Sometimes it takes a few presses "Refresh" in Device Manager before the new device appears, but it should work. The newest SCSI peripherals can auto-configure themselves, where the host adapter assigns them a SCSI ID. Normally, Win95 ASPI will scan the SCSI bus on power-up and present you with the "Found new hardware" requester. NOTE: A handful of SCSI drivers for Win95 seem to be missing Logical Unit Number (LUN) support. LUN support lets things like CD-ROM Jukeboxes work, by assigning a drive letter to each LUN. The result is: You will only see ONE device and not six or seven. To fix this, get an updated Win95 driver for your SCSI card, or get a different card (All Adaptec drivers for AHA-1510 and up have LUN support; others you might be able to turn on LUN support in their "Settings" tab in the Device Properties.) Also check out MS's CD-ROM Changer Driver Update. Monitors: Win95 video drivers can poll the monitor for scan rate information, if the monitor can reply back. Printers: PnP printers are just starting to show up. This is where the printer sends back info about itself on a bi-directional parallel port. The "Windows has found new hardware..." requester will show up, asking you for a Win95 printer driver, and you can begin using the printer right away. PCMCIA: If you have a notebook computer, you need Win95. Forget that messy DOS PC card driver nonsense and incompatibilities with certain PC card chipsets, and special "no card services" drivers. Win95 runs Card Services in protected mode, using no conventional memory, and will give you the "Found new hardware" requester when you insert a new card for the first time. Modems work straight away with Win95 TAPI programs. Net cards will re-connect to the network for you when you insert them. SCSI cards will mount all devices on its cable. And best of all: You can still use dumb DOS programs that require EMS memory at the same time! ------------------------------ Subject: 4.13. Top ten hardware mistakes 10. Using a DOS CD-ROM driver 9. Using real mode PCMCIA drivers (DOS PCMCIA sucks!) 8. Using a Gravis Ultrasound with Win 3.1 drivers (Visit Gravis, (http://www.gravis.com/) GUS owners, and get your fair support!) 7. Running a Win 3.1 setup program to install drivers 6. Running a DOS setup program to install Win 3.1 drivers 5. Installing a Plug & Play modem without enabling Plug & Play on the modem 4. Buying a piece of hardware without Win95 support 3. Buying a whole bunch of HDs, CD-ROM, tape drive, scanner, without considering SCSI 2. Buying a notebook computer without Win95 1. Buying an IBM compatible with an Award PnP BIOS (Upgrade to MR BIOS (http://www.mrbios.com/) soon!) Subject: 5. Modems and TAPI * 5.1. What is TAPI? * 5.2. How do I use my modem with Win95 apps? * 5.3. How can I get an outside line in my office phone system? * 5.4. How can I dial long distance? + 5.4.1. Why is my computer dialing long distance when I know it's a local number? + 5.4.2. How can I use my phone company's calling card? o 5.4.2.1. What if the card isn't from AT&T or Bell Canada? + 5.4.3. Why isn't my computer dialing the area code for long distance within my area code? + 5.4.4. Why do I have to give the area code for local numbers? + 5.4.5. I don't live in North America. How does this area code nonsense affect me? * 5.5. I have a notebook computer and I travel. How do I set up different locations and dialing rules? * 5.6. How can I turn off the annoying call waiting beep that cuts me off? $^&@(*#$ * 5.7. My local phone company makes me dial the area code for local numbers. How can I do that? * 5.8. Top ten dialing mis-conceptions * 5.9. Programs that answer the phone... + 5.9.1. Can I dial out while some other program is waiting to answer? (yes!) + 5.9.2. How do I run several answering programs at once? + 5.9.3. You mean I can have a terminal server, fax receiver, AND a voice mail receiver running all at once? (yes!) o 5.9.3.1. How to obtain and install UNIMODEM V from Microsoft o 5.9.3.2. ...and I can dial out while they're all running too? (See? Isn't TAPI cool?) + 5.9.4. Top ten TAPI server apps * 5.10. OK that's all cool, but what about non-traditional modem-like devices? + 5.10.1. ISDN Adapters + 5.10.2. Packet Radio transceivers + 5.10.3. Null-modem cables + 5.10.4. "Windows only" modems + 5.10.5. PCI modems + 5.10.6. USB modems * 5.11. Oops... I have a Win 3.1 modem app too. How does that complicate things? + 5.11.1. My Win 3.1 modem app claims to use TAPI. Will it work in Win95? * 5.12. General TAPI Annoyances... + 5.12.1. I just changed my modem, but the app won't work with the new modem. + 5.12.2. Why do I get the "Please confirm blah blah..." requester when I run a modem app? + 5.12.3. Win95 reports my modem as a "Standard modem". Where can I get a proper driver? ------------------------------ Subject: 5.1. What is TAPI? Telephony Application Programming Interface. This cool piece of Windows 95 lets you use modems and other communication devices easier. Under TAPI, it's possible to change devices, for example, and not have to re-configure every piece of software to work with it. You can set up a single set of dialing rules, or multiple dialing rules based on your location, and the apps are smart enough to dial long distance as required. You can run a modem answering program, and quickly dial out or send a fax without having to shut down the answering program. I really like TAPI because of cool features like that. Microsoft extended TAPI to include SmartRing (TM) compatibility and voice capability in UNIMODEM V, available with the Win95 Service Pack. Super cool. ------------------------------ Subject: 5.2. How do I use my modem with Win95 apps? Install a "modem driver" first. To do this, run Control Panel/Modems and have it look for your modem. Win95 will then send "AT" to all the COM ports and look for an "OK" response. It will then query the modem's I registers to try to identify it. Then it picks an appropriate driver and asks you to confirm it, and gives you a chance to change it, or replace it with one from a disk. When all this finishes, a new "Modems" class of devices will appear in Device Manager. I use "driver" in quotes because the modem really doesn't need a piece of program code unique to it. I refer to a "modem driver" as the .INF file which describes how to communicate to the modem. Most standard data and fax modems only require this info file. Non-standard modems and voice modems installed via UNIMODEM V, however, will add extra software, libraries, and executables. In this case, "driver" really refers to extra software. Finally, if this is the very first time a modem found its way into your computer, Win95 will ask you about your location (what country, what area code, any special codes needed to get to an outside line, etc). One thing: If you live in North America and you DON'T live in the United States, PLEASE pick a different country besides "United States of America". Pick your appropriate country. Sometimes, when you install a PnP modem for the first time it doesn't let you define your location, so go to Control Panel / Modems and set your location. Now that you have the modem available, run any Win95 application that uses modems. For a quickie test, run HyperTerminal, which comes with Win95. Immediately, this program asks you for a connection name, and the modem you wish to connect with (If you have multiple modems, you may pick one from the list). For this quickie test, when the "Dial" requester comes up, just hit "Cancel". This goes to the terminal screen where you can type "AT" yourself and expect an "OK" response. If this works, great. You can then try calling your local BBS by feeding its number to the connection setup and having it dial. You probably noticed cool buttons like "Calling from:", "Dial Properties", and the like. I get into all this cool stuff in the next sections. ------------------------------ Subject: 5.3. How can I get an outside line in my office phone system? This is the obvious thing to want if you use Win95 from your office. Run Control Panel/Modems, hit Dialing Properties, and check out the "To access an outside line" boxes. Type in the appropriate keys you'd normally press on your phone's keypad into these boxes. Insert a comma after this code to insert a five second pause. For example, "9," dials nine then waits five seconds before dialing the outside number. Remember that "," because you need to let your phone system switch to an outside line before you start dialing. The "," is typically a five second pause but this may vary depending on the modem type. If you have a unique code for dialing long distance in your office, you can put it in there, but don't include the standard "1" because TAPI does this already. All Win95 modem apps will use this rule as soon as you OK it. ------------------------------ Subject: 5.4. How can I dial long distance? Thanks to Wouter Pinkhof for verifying these rules in Belgum; they do work outside of North America. You probably noticed an area code box in the phone number requesters you get in Win95 modem apps. Normally the apps insert your current area code (the area code for your current location). To make the program dial long distance, change the area code. Also make sure you have "Use country code and area code" if the program has such a switch. The app will automatically insert the "1" (or whatever your country code is) and any pre-dial instructions needed to get to an outside line. If the number you're dialing is long distance but in the same area code, use the program's "Dial as a long distance call" switch. HyperTerminal, Dial-up networking, and WinFax Pro 7.0 have switches like this. Other programs such as MS Fax let you do this in the person's phone number entry (with a switch like "Dial area code even though it's the same as mine") or set long distance rules by dial prefix. How a program dials long distance for same-area-code numbers depends on the program. * 5.4.1. Why is my computer dialing long distance when I know it's a local number? Maybe you have the "Dial area code" or "Dial as a long distance number" switch turned on for that connection or number. Check with the app's manual for setting this switch. If you're dialing a local number, make sure you turn off this switch. You might've used a different area code in your dialing location than in the number you're dialing. Check to see that the area codes match. This is the only way that Win95 knows how to distinguish a long distance call from a local one. Also, and this is quite common in Canada, maybe you specified "United States" as your country, either in your location properties or in the number itself. Set the country appropriately. If the country is different, even if the country code and area code are the same, it will try to dial the number as long distance. Apparently, 4.00.950B will catch this mistake (as long as the country code matches, not necessarily the country NAME). * 5.4.2. How can I use my phone company's calling card? Bring up dialing properties again, and hit the switch saying "Use calling card". Then hit the "Calling card..." button. In the US and Canada, the most common is "Calling card via zero" but Win95 comes with calling card settings for most of the major long distance carriers. The calling card setting is great if you're dialing from work, but you don't want to cost the company for your personal calls. Calling card settings are part of your dialing location, and each location may use a different calling card setup. This is great for notebook users who may plug into a hotel's phone system, or a branch office's system, or a customer's system so you don't make the customer pay for your phone call. * 5.4.2.1. What if the card isn't from AT&T or Bell Canada? A lot of weird long distance companies came out of the woodwork up here in Canada, and many of them have bizarre calling card setups. To create a card setup for your long distance company, first figure out what you'd have to do to dial the number normally (like dial an (800) number or something, followed by a user code, followed by the number, or whatever) including the length of time between blocks of numbers. Then in the Calling Card requester from the last section, hit "New...". Give this new card a name. Now you'll get three text fields to insert your dialing rules. Right-click on one of them and hit "What's this..." to get a list of commands you can insert into these boxes. Without a special dialing sequence (IE: Direct Dial), the defaults for these would be: Local Calls: G Long Distance Calls: 1FG (This'll be "EFG" outside of North America) International Calls: 011EFG (the "011" may be different outside of NA) The "G" is the local number, the "F" is the area code, and the "E" is a country code. The other keys you can use include dialable digits (including the * and # keys), commas for pauses, a calling card number itself, and so on and so on. Use this basic sequence and insert the extra keys you need to press. For example, to dial long distance calls with a calling card via zero, you would replace the "1" in the long distance rule with a "0", then after the "G" you insert some pauses and then the calling card number. Right-click on any of these boxes and hit "What's this" to get a list of valid keys you can insert into these boxes. Finally when you're satisfied, hit "OK" to save the card. You can go back and edit this calling card later. If the long distance company uses voice prompts, be extra sure to include pauses for the duration of the voice prompts. Use commas "," to insert five second pauses. Also, if you normally get a "Thank-you" message at the end, insert pauses at the end so the modem doesn't try to recognize it as a voice answer and hang up on you. * 5.4.3. Why isn't my computer dialing the area code for long distance within my area code? Don't forget to tell the program that this number is a long distance number. Again, this varies between programs. When you tell the program it's a long distance number, it will use the long distance dialing rule instead of the local rule. MS Fax can do this by number prefix; other programs let you do this per-number. It's also possible you have a pre-release of Windows 95. Some early versions would only just dial the "1" followed by the number, without inserting the area code. If you get this symptom, you might have a pre-release, developer's, or other bogus copy of Win95. Get your disks or CD replaced and re-install Win95 to fix this. Apps call on TAPI.DLL or TAPI32.DLL to generate the string of digits. If you have to use this broken copy of Win95, you can fake your own area code so it's different than the number you're dialing, and then the app will insert the area code. I don't recommend this kluge at all; you should replace your Win95 copy as soon as you can. * 5.4.4. Why do I have to give the area code for local numbers? This is so the app (and TAPI.DLL) knows not to insert the "1" and area code before the number. Apps will automatically insert your current location's area code for you, so normally you don't have to worry about this. If you need to dial long distance within your area code, tell the app that the number is a long distance number, and it will insert the "1" and area code for you. Proper Win95 programs offer a "Dial as long distance number" option for this. * 5.4.5. I don't live in North America. How does this area code nonsense affect me? To use all this advice and work outside of North America, swap the "1" with your country code, and "Area Code" with your city code. Otherwise all the same rules apply. Again, thanks to Wouter Pinkhof and Vu Tien Khang for input here. In Calling Card setups you may have to be especially careful with the country code. Substitute the "1" for your country code, or just use "E" which uses your target's country code. Ten-digit dialing rules may apply in Eurpoean countries (France is one example). Read section 5.7 below for suggestions. Previous versions of this FAQ mentioned the need to insert leading zeroes for "area codes" shorter than three digits; this is not necessary. ------------------------------ Subject: 5.5. I have a notebook computer and I travel. How do I set up different locations and dialing rules? To create a new location, go to that Dialing Properties screen and hit "New location". Many TAPI apps provide a Dialing Properties button which opens your location's properties. Each new location can have its own area code, country code, dial-out access rules, even calling cards. Be sure to set each of these when you create a new location. This is pretty cool because you can keep the number entries themselves the same, and TAPI knows to use different dialing rules depending on your location. Apps will let you pick your dialing location just before you dial your number. When you swap locations the digit string will change to reflect your current location. The one exception is MS Fax, which asks you for your location when you run the New Fax Wizard. ------------------------------ Subject: 5.6. How can I turn off the annoying call waiting beep that cuts me off? To turn off call waiting for the duration of this call, bring up your dialing properties and turn on "This location has Call Waiting, to disable it dial..." and type the string needed to disable call waiting. The drop-down list gives many variations of "*70" to choose from. Most tone-dial systems use *70, and most pulse dial systems will use 1170. ------------------------------ Subject: 5.7. My local phone company makes me dial the area code for local numbers. How can I do that? I heard of some American communities that make you dial "204 555-1212" (without the "1") to dial the local number "555-1212" for example. Win95 doesn't support this right out of the box, but you can set up a bogus "calling card" to enforce this ten-digit-dialing rule. In your location properties, turn on "Dial using calling card..." and hit "New" to make a new calling card. Use these dialing rules: Local Calls: FG Long Distance Calls: 1FG International Calls: 011EFG The "FG" in the local calls rule will insert the area code for all local calls. MS has other ten-digit-dialing suggestions in KB article Q129049, but this one keeps the rest of the TAPI benefits, like turning off call waiting, or using dial prefixes to get to outside lines, or using third party calling cards. ------------------------------ Subject: 5.8. Top ten dialing mis-conceptions 10. Win95 doesn't let me use my special calling card (Just make up a new card) 9. WinFax Pro 7.0 doesn't use Win95 dialing rules (Yes it does; you just have to MAKE IT use them. See the WinFax Pro 7.0 manual for how to tell WinFax to use "Windows dialing".) 8. Win95 won't do ten-digit-dialing (Make up a "calling card" with ten-digit-dialing rules) 7. I can't use my office phone system to dial out (Well, that depends on your office policies!) 6. Call Waiting keeps cutting me off (Just tell Win95 to disable it in location properties) 5. MS Fax won't dial long distance within my area code (Make an address book entry with "Dial area code" turned on) 4. It keeps trying to dial long distance (get your country settings right) 3. Dialing rules are a complete waste of time (Really? Would you rather configure each of your programs separately?) 2. TAPI sucks. (not.) 1. TAPI sucks. (Really, this is both the top two mis-conceptions at the same time!) ------------------------------ Subject: 5.9. Programs that answer the phone... TAPI works both ways. Programs that dial out don't access the COM ports directly, rather they access a TAPI device which communicates on behalf of the COM port. This logic applies to answering programs too. Really, it's TAPI that detects the ring, then alerts the answering program and then that program communicates via TAPI to pick up the phone and start communicating. This has nothing to do with apps talking to COM ports. These answering programs follow this logic (and perhaps others too): * MS Fax * MS Plus! dial-up server * WinFax Pro 7.0 * pcAnywhere32 * 5.9.1. Can I dial out while some other program is waiting to answer? Because the answering programs communicate via TAPI, an outside program can jump in and use the TAPI device without the answering program even knowing about it. It's waiting for a signal from TAPI to answer the phone, and that won't happen while the other program's using the modem. * 5.9.2. How do I run several answering programs at once? Only the newest class of modems (the voice modems) can do this. To do this, obtain one such voice modem, and download UNIMODEM V from Microsoft's web site. Once you installed all this, a little applet called "Operator Agent" will invoke the appropriate app to answer the phone. Because the apps themselves are waiting for TAPI signals, rather than signals from the COM port itself, Operator Agent can signal the appropriate app depending on the caller's response to its prompts. The Agent does its job by sending a voice message to the caller, asking them to press a key from 1 to 3 for voice, fax, or data. It then alerts the appropriate program. Alternately, you can use Distinctive Ring. If your modem supports SmartRing (USR's Vi, Compaq's Presario modems, and IBM's MWAVE are some SmartRing capable modems) and you have more than one phone number for your phone line, you can configure what kind of program answers what kind of ring. Bring up the Modems control panel and bring up properties for your modem. You'll notice two new tabs (if your modem supports them): "Distinctive Ring", and "Call Forwarding". * Distinctive Ring lets you specify what kind of program (either Voice, Fax, or Data) answers a particular ring. The ring choices may be as simple as "one ring, two rings, three rings", or may use a kind of Morse Code (with intermixed long & short rings if your modem supports that). Once you specified what ring goes with what kind of app, OK it, then launch your answering apps. NOTE: TAPI apps identify themselves as one of these three kinds of programs when they open a TAPI port, so you don't need to worry, for example, if you replace MS Fax with WinFax Pro 7.0. * Call Forwarding lets you forward calls to a different number when you dial out using a TAPI dial-out client (HyperTerminal, or for sending a fax, or for Dial-up Networking). Specify here what kind of code you use to forward your calls, and hit OK. The system will issue the call forwarding command when you dial-out, and undo it when you disconnect. The Distinctive Ring options won't kick in until you launch more than one kind of answering program. However, they don't require an external applet to monitor the phone line with. * 5.9.3. You mean I can have a terminal server, fax receiver, AND a voice mail receiver running all at once? Yes. Depending on the kind of call, determined by Operator or SmartRing, TAPI will alert the correct program. NOTE: This is an interesting bug in UNIMODEM V. If you use Operator or SmartRing without running some kind of voice message app, the system will patiently wait for a voice messaging app to answer the phone. In fact, it will wait forever (or at least until you try to dial-out, then it will reset the "Ring Monitor" and all is well again.) If a call for Data or Fax comes in, it will answer correctly, until the next voice call comes in. I'm waiting for someone to write a "fake" voice messaging app that only resets the ring monitor when a voice call comes in. This way, you can take advantage of SmartRing or the Operator without shelling out big bucks for a voice mail app, or you can answer the voice calls yourself, so the Fax and or Data servers can still operate. * 5.9.3.1. How to obtain and install UNIMODEM V from Microsoft Visit the Win95 OSR2 updates page to find and download UNIMODEM V (Listed as the VoiceView update). To Install UNIMODEM V, use Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup and Have Disk... or find the UNIMDM.INF file, right-click on it and hit "Install". Then you might want to try re-detecting your modem, or choose from the additions to the modem list to find your voice modem. 4.00.950B users will already have UNIMODEM V built in. NT Workstation 4.0 also includes it. * 5.9.3.2. ...and I can dial out while they're all running too? Absolutely. This multiple app functionality doesn't prevent you from dialing out, because the apps are still listening to a TAPI port rather than a COM port. Now do you think TAPI sucks? * 5.9.4. Top ten TAPI server apps (Apps that answer the phone) 10. WinFax Pro 7.0 with Delrina's CommSuite 9. MS Fax (Comes with Win95) 8. UNIMODEM V's Operator Agent 7. Dial-up server which comes with MS Plus! 6. pcAnywhere32 5. ... (Uhh... any ideas?) ------------------------------ Subject: 5.10. OK that's all cool, but what about non-traditional modem-like devices? * 5.10.1. ISDN Adapters Dial-up Networking 1.2 and later comes with ISDN configuration software, but the simplest ISDN adapters let you use any old version of Dial-up Networking or other PPP software. Such examples include Motorola's now-defunct BitSURFR and 3Com's Courier or Impact adapters. Previous releases of this FAQ described how difficult it was to get ISDN connectivity. Well, with the right adapter and a cooperative phone company, it proves simpler than I thought. NOTE: I used to refer to an ISDN "modem". Since there's no MOdulation or DEModulation occuring in an ISDN connection (except when the adapter provides analogue ports for regular phones and modems), the word "modem" is not the right word. * 5.10.2. Packet Radio transceivers This came up thanks to the efforts of Gordon McAndrew (gmcandrew@aec.env.gov.ab.ca), who originally posted about using PPP over packet radio. The solution was to use the null modem .INF file and issue commands directly to the radio device in a dial-up script. Unfortunately, Win95 insisted in sending a phone number string through the connection. They worked around this by inserting the user name into the space normally reserved for the phone number. Strange, huh? I don't know the command set used for packet radio modems, but I'd like to see a packet radio .inf file made up one day. For example, enter the radio frequency in the phone number box. Replace all the "AT" commands with appropriate ones for the radio. Thanks to Gordon McAndrew's work, we already know that PPP and TAPI in general does work over such a device. * 5.10.3. Null-modem cables I covered this already in Chapter 8, but I'll cover it here. There's a MDMCBX.INF file, used to identify the device to Win95, that lets you install a Direct Connection driver on a standard COM port. This can work with stuff besides dial-up networking. To install it, use Add New Hardware or the Modems control panel, and hit "Have disk..." so you can point to this .inf file. * 5.10.4. "Windows only" modems TAPI lets you use any kind of telephony device, not just COM port based modems, so it became fashionable to make "software" modems, or non-standard PnP modems that don't occupy a standard COM port address. To install this class of modem, hit "Have disk..." and feed it the disk with the drivers for the modem. If you can live without Win 3.1 or DOS support for these devices, they will work just fine with Win95 apps. In many cases they do create a DOS style device (like COM5: if you happen to already have four COM ports) than you can access from DOS or OS-friendly Win 3.1 apps that support non-standard devices. In other cases they will just show up as a TAPI device without any DOS support. Be prepared to stick with Win95 apps (a good idea in any case) if you purchase such a modem. * 5.10.5. PCI modems PCI modems are brand new as of September 1998. The only reasoning I can see for using a PCI slot modem is because you don't have any more ISA slots on your system. PCI is really overkill for something 1/20th the speed of a floppy disk drive. What's worse is the performace these things give. A PCI modem from Diamond, sold under the Supra label, has very poor latency compared to traditional ISA modems or COM port modems; 500 ms ping times compared to 120 ms or faster with a USR ISA modem. * 5.10.6. USB modems If you own 4.00.950B or later, or Win98, you can use modems that connect to Universal Serial Bus ports. USB is like a high speed version of Apple's Desktop Bus on the Macintosh, but is bidirectional; you can send data to USB devices as well as receive input from them. If you go USB, be prepared to abandon Win 3.1 and DOS communication programs altogether. ------------------------------ Subject: 5.11. Oops... I have a Win 3.1 modem app too. How does that complicate things? The original COMM.DRV still exists, and if a Win 3.1 app opens a COM port through this device, TAPI won't try to open it. You won't have any of the TAPI benefits with this app, and you'll have to manually configure its dialing properties, manually close it so other TAPI apps can use the modem, etc... Non-standard COMM.DRV replacements usually won't interfere with TAPI, because TAPI does not refer to this device at all. In fact, there are separate VxDs and SERIALXX.DLL files (and the TAPI.DLLs of course) for 32-bit access to COM ports. The non-standard driver better not be calling un-supported stuff in Win95 though. In general, try to avoid Win 3.1 modem apps. As much as I lay the crap on WinFax Pro 7.0, for example, it's a far better solution than WinFax Pro 4.0 for Win 3.1. Hold out as long as practical for Win95 voice mail apps too, so there's no argument between non-standard apps trying to use the modem and conflicting with TAPI. Win95's supposed to make using modems easier, and Win 3.1 modem apps don't help at all. * 5.11.1. My Win 3.1 modem app claims to use TAPI. Will it work with Win95? I haven't seen a 16-bit TAPI app yet. Apparently they exist, because one reader wrote about it. There are references in the Win95 resource kit to 16-bit TAPI programs, and the 16-bit TAPI.DLL and TELEPHON.INI files. I gather that they will work as long as they use this interface to communicate with the modem. Like Win95 TAPI apps, if this Win 3.1 app has an auto-answer function, it should "nicely" give up the modem when you try to use it for other connections, like Dial-up Networking. You also don't need to specify the COM port where the modem lives; only its name from the list of installed modems. This one reader's app comes with a version of TAPI designed for Win 3.1, and it seems to interfere with Win95's Unimodem TAPI service. Microsoft documented in KB articles Q120221 and Q150280, how to edit or rebuild the TELEPHON.INI file, and how to enable the Telephony control panel. In particular, the Telephony control panel can remove 16-bit TAPI providers from your system, allowing 16-bit TAPI apps to use the 32-bit Unimodem Service Provider. ------------------------------ Subject: 5.12. General TAPI Annoyances... * 5.12.1. I just changed my modem, but the app won't work with the new modem. Not to worry. Win95 apps will look in an entry in SYSTEM.INI called "TelephonINIChanged=" followed by a date. If the app notices that this date is later than the last time you changed any TAPI settings, it will ask you to re-confirm the new settings. Each TAPI device has a unique port ID with it. If you remove and add a modem, or you remove and re-add the same modem driver, this port ID will change. Well written Win95 modem apps will check this and offer to let you select (or re-select) your modem. One exception of course: WinFax Pro 7.0 does not do this. After you change your modem, go to WinFax's modem config screen and re-select your TAPI modem to allow it to work again. MS Fax does this re-selection automatically, and picks the first available TAPI device without your intervention. If you want to use a different modem though, check the MS Fax modem settings and select the modem you want to use. * 5.12.2. Why do I get the "Please confirm blah blah..." requester when I run a modem app? Most likely because you changed your modem. Just make sure you select (or re-select) the modem you want the app to use. The app will save this new modem choice (and its TAPI port ID) and use it until the next time you change it. * 5.12.3. Win95 reports my modem as a "Standard modem." Where can I get a proper driver for it? In many cases, this is because the modem does not have a good description of itself in its I registers (If you have access to a terminal program, try typing "ATI1" to "ATI10" to see what responses you get.) You can change the modem type during the Add Modem wizard by hitting the "Change..." button and selecting your correct model. Win95 comes with a lot of modem .INF files that otherwise fit into the "Standard modem" category. If your modem isn't listed (like the newest voice modems), download UNIMODEM V from MS's Web site, or check out the other modem .INF files available at the same site. Also check the manufacturer's web site for updates. You can probably still use the modem with the "Standard modem" driver (if it's a Hayes (TM) compatible modem) in the meantime. Or if you feel really adventurous, try editing one of the existing .INF files to create a descriptor for your modem, and save it with a unique name. Subject: 6. Novell NetWare (TM) Networking * 6.1. How do I connect to NetWare servers? * 6.2. What do I have to do to make the NetWare server work safely with Win95 clients? + 6.2.1. NetWare 2.x + 6.2.2. NetWare 3.x + 6.2.3. NetWare 3.12 + 6.2.4. NetWare 4.x (Directory Services) * 6.3. How to I make NetWare-related TSRs work? They won't work in the login script. * 6.4. How do I use a client other than Microsoft's Client for NetWare? + 6.4.1. NETX + 6.4.2. VLM + 6.4.3. Client32 * 6.5. How do I connect to the server from Single mode DOS? (Outside of Win95) * 6.6. How can I receive NetWare pop-up messages? * 6.7. Why don't I get a login prompt when Win95 starts? * 6.8. What bugs should I watch out for? Where can I get fixes? + 6.8.1. Automatic frame detection doesn't work + 6.8.2. NetWare C$ peer sharing bug + 6.8.3. WAN routing tables keep getting trashed + 6.8.4. Password caching bugs o 6.8.4.1. How do I disable password caching? + 6.8.5. Server ABENDs when I start a Win95 client (and other bugs) * 6.9. Top ten NetWare client mistakes * 6.10. What does Novell's Client32 offer that Microsoft's Client for NetWare does not? * 6.11. What's this I heard about MS's client only being NetWare 2.2 compliant? * 6.12. How do I share my hard drive or printer to other NetWare users? (Avoid if possible!) + 6.12.1. How do I share my printer through RPRINTER or PSERVER instead? + 6.12.2. ...on a Directory Services network? (NetWare 4.x) * 6.13. How do I make Win95's cool network features work on NetWare? + 6.13.1. System Policies + 6.13.2. System Policies on a Directory Services network + 6.13.3. Group Policies + 6.13.4. User Profiles and Roving Desktops + 6.13.5. User-level Security + 6.13.6. Remote Administration + 6.13.7. Remote Admin on a Directory Services network * 6.14. My suggestions for preparing an automated Win95 installation and workstation replication This particular section is rather anti-Novell. Forgive me, but this is a Win95 FAQ, not a NetWare FAQ. My objective is to make using Win95 easier, and if it means patching and hacking the server, so be it. Chances are, you have a lot more clients than servers. :-) Novell MHS mail system users will want to check out the MS Exchange FAQ, especially the part about the MHS delivery service now available from Infinite Technologies. This lets you use Exchange or MS Outlook clients and not have to change your mail server. ------------------------------ Subject: 6.1. How do I connect to Novell NetWare (TM) servers? First, ask your administrator if he prepared the server for Win95 clients. This is critical, if you want your administrator to like you. Then, Install Client for NetWare networks, and fill in the "Preferred Server" value in CNW's Properties. Set your primary login to "Client for NetWare Networks". Also, install IPX/SPX protocol (It will install automatically along with Client for NetWare), and select a frame type in its Advanced properties. Auto-detect does not always work. Your choice of frame type depends on what the NetWare server uses. NetWare 3.11 and earlier typically use 802.3, later servers use 802.2. The next time you restart, you will get a NetWare login requester asking for your name and password. When you feed it this, your NetWare login script will execute. More details for NetWare Directory Services later. ------------------------------ Subject: 6.2. What do I have to do to a NetWare server to work with Win95 clients? Many, many, people have crashed NetWare servers with Win95 computers using Microsoft's Client for NetWare. A lot of this is from the client pushing the server, but a lot more of it comes from misunderstandings from users! The most critical thing to do to a NetWare server is to update its software. Old .LAN drivers might not keep up with the Win95 clients. An old '386 or '486 class server will also have troubles keeping up with Pentiums running Client for NetWare. Novell's VLM Client for DOS causes many of these troubles too. Details are at Rich Graves' Win95NetBugs site. In each of these cases, get the latest .LAN driver for your server's net cards, get the latest base OS patch sets for your server from netwire.novell.com, and get the Admin edition of the Win95 Service Pack. The service pack tools, in particular, include improvements in batch setup for NDS networks, and fix the nasty problems caused by the original Win95 release. Special notes for server versions below: * 6.2.1. NetWare 2.x Ensure you disable Packet Burst and long filenames on the Win95 clients, by adding these lines to the clients' system.ini file: [nwredir] SupportBurst=0 SupportLFN=0 You can also use a non-burst frame type (802.3), and enforce no LFNs via system policies. * 6.2.2. NetWare 3.x These servers have a nasty time with Win95 clients using long filenames and packet burst. Use the NetWare 2.x techniques above, or apply pburst.nlm and the OS/2 name space fix, available at Novell's NetWire site. Back up your server before powering up a Win95 client for the first time! Client for NetWare will not use long filenames on a NetWare 3.11 server unless you explicitly tell it to, meaning you KNOW you have the name space patch installed. If you want to use long filenames on a patched NetWare 3.11 server, you should set up a system policy to enforce LFN usage, or include: [nwredir] SupportLFN=2 in system.ini * 6.2.3. NetWare 3.12 This, according to my observations, is a patched and bug-fixed NW 3.11. This is the server that Microsoft did most of their client testing on, and it will work with packet burst and long filenames without patches. You still need the OS/2 name space to support long filenames. Set the frame type on the Win95 stations to Ethernet_802.2. * 6.2.4. NetWare 4.x (Directory Services) If you don't need to use NDS and you have Bindery emulation available on the server, you can use the Client for NetWare as per NetWare 3.12 servers. The big catch is it won't recognize an NDS login script! To work around this, you can hand-copy the NDS system login script to sys:public and call it net$log.dat. Another work-around is to log into the server in Bindery mode (An option available in login.exe, or just log in with regular Client for NetWare) and run a copy of NW 3.12's syscon to make system and user login scripts for Bindery mode. Details are in KB article Q128253. However, Microsoft released an NDS Service which will use NDS login scripts and work with NDS programs. Install Services for NDS by adding it as a Service (you still need Client for NetWare installed). Services for NDS is part of Microsoft's Win95 Service Pack 1 complete disk set. You will also need the Shell32 Fix and the NWSERVER fix, which come with Service Pack 1, and six DLL files from Novell which come with the NetWare 4.x server. You will still need Bindery emulation for peer sharing (File & print sharing for NetWare) and Remote Administration. Set the User Level security provider to point to this server running Bindery emulation and you're all set. Or just don't bother with peer sharing via NetWare (Which you shouldn't do anyway except for Remote Administration.) I had the opportunity to finally try Services for NDS (25 APR 96) and it appears to run just fine. After I hand-copied all DLL files from Novell's SYS:\PUBLIC\CLIENT\DOSWIN directory to SYS:PUBLIC, I could run nwadmin.exe and the other Win 3.1 NDS utilities in there. WARNING: Novell now has a 32-bit NetWare API (32-bit versions of their DLLs) and these DLLs, as far as I know, do NOT work with MS's NDS client. I haven't tried them, but on more than one occasion I got a letter from a user regarding them. For example, Pegasus Mail for Win95 requires the 32-bit NetWare DLLs but they don't work with MSNDS. Also, for the 16-bit DLLs, use the ones in SYS:\PUBLIC\CLIENT\DOSWIN\ and no others, because the ones that come with Client32 are really 16/32 stubs and require the Novell 32-bit DLLs. NOTE: The NDS client still depends on accurate Bindery emulation running on the Preferred Server. If you use any additional services that depend on User Level Security (such as Remote Administration) be sure you set the Bindery context to match the Organizational Unit you want your user list for. In an absolute worst case, set the Bindery context to point to each of your Organizational Units and Organization. Type this at the server console, or include it in AUTOEXEC.NCF (Of course, use your real unit names, not the example MYORG): Set Bindery Context = O=MYORG,OU=UNIT1.MYORG,OU=UNIT2.MYORG ------------------------------ Subject: 6.3. How do I make NetWare-related TSRs work? They won't work in the login script? They won't, no matter how hard you try either. Win95 runs the login script from a single DOS session, which completely unloads when the login script finishes. Loading TSRs from a login script is stupid anyway, in fact, loading DOS TSRs in Win95 in general is stupid. But if you have to load network TSRs, Win95 did keep the old winstart.bat capability. Place winstart.bat in your Win95 directory where it will execute just after all the network components load, and just before the login prompt comes on. Load your TSRs in that. They will be available from all DOS sessions afterwards. Details are in KB article Q127794. Yes this does work; I can run Cheyenne's ARCSERVE (TM) for Windows 5.01 by loading BREQUEST.EXE this way. Which reminds me: Do any of you know of a 32-bit BTRIEVE requester for Win95 yet? Oh yes, TSRs loaded in WINSTART.BAT execute in an independent DOS session which you'll never see. ------------------------------ Subject: 6.4. How do I use a client other than Microsoft's Client for NetWare? I won't touch Client32 yet; you can read about it at Novell's Client32 Home Page and make your own judgments. However, some applications need to see real mode NetWare clients (even though all the real mode hooks are there with Client for NetWare, and with Services for NDS). So... To use a DOS client, you will need all the regular DOS client software (LSL, IPXODI, etc). Once you have all that in place, you can add Win 3.1 support from Network Control Panel as a Client. * 6.4.1. NETX: Novell no longer recommends running netx.exe, but it does work as it did with Win 3.1. Install the DOS client, then add "Novell NetWare Shell 3.x" as a Client from Network Control Panel. Setup will prompt you for Novell's disks when needed. * 6.4.2. VLM: This works better with Win95 than NETX, and is "Safer" than Client for NetWare for your finicky programs and NDS apps. Try this as a last resort, if you can't get the app makers to clean up their programs. Use Novell's regular DOS installation of this client (Don't add the Windows software from Novell's setup), then add "Novell NetWare Shell 4.x and above" as a Client from Network Control Panel. Setup will prompt you for Novell's disks when needed. NOTE: Do NOT use Client for MS/File & Print Sharing for MS networks alongside a real mode NetWare client! Neither Novell nor Microsoft support this, and the mix of real mode/protected mode clients can cause loss of hair for network administrators. Use all protected mode clients and services if you want NetWare logins AND peer sharing. Client/FPS for MS networks works great alongside Client for NetWare, and even Client32 from Novell. * 6.4.3. Client32 Much of the Client32 stuff that was here is unavailable as of September 1998. Novell now has an even larger client install (11 MB!) available from their Download site. You can bet that, when I dust off my NetWare 4.11 demo CDs again, I'll be trying this. ------------------------------ Subject: 6.5. How do I connect to the server from Single mode DOS? (Outside of Win95) Win95 Network Setup installed a real mode client for NetWare at the same time as the protected mode one. If you exit to DOS ("Restart in DOS mode") or boot to "Command Prompt Only", and you're using Microsoft's Client for NetWare, you can log in to the NetWare server by typing NET START NWREDIR at the DOS prompt. This will load a NETX compatible client using NDIS2 drivers and protocols. You can then change to your login drive and perform a normal DOS client login. Since it's only a NETX compatible client it can't perform NDS logins; so you could try: NET START NWLINK Which uses Novell's VLM client, to do NDS logins. I haven't tried using Microsoft's IPX and Novell's client together, but in theory it should work. If it doesn't, you can always load Novell's net card drivers (LSL, etc) and VLM. NOTE: NWREDIR's real mode components take more conventional memory than a NETX client would, so you should only use this if your application can't run in a DOS session, or if you're performing any debugging. However, these components will automatically load high if you have upper memory available. You should prepare a special PIF file for this kind of configuration. In addition, I found sometimes NET START NWREDIR would give a "This file system is incompatible" style of message, which happens more often on NetWare 4 servers. If this happens, NET START NWLINK followed by NETX or VLM should work. ------------------------------ Subject: 6.6. How can I receive NetWare popup messages? With Client for NetWare, use WINPOPUP. Add it from Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup, in the Accessories components. Keep this loaded or you won't be able to see or send pop up messages. WINPOPUP will receive messages from Bindery and NDS clients, but you can only send messages to Bindery clients. Novell's SEND command in a DOS session will let you send messages to NDS clients. You can force WINPOPUP to load by keeping a copy of it in SYS:PUBLIC (or any other public place) and enforce a System Policy to run it on start-up. In Default Computer/System/Run, insert an entry with a UNC path to WINPOPUP.EXE, such as \\SRV\SYS\PUBLIC\WINPOPUP.EXE. This way, the users don't have any excuse for not seeing pop up messages. NOTE: Enforcing a policy like this will prevent any other programs that run from this Registry entry (like SAGE.EXE from MS Plus) from running. If you have to, include an entry for SAGE.EXE as well (No error messages come up if the file is missing, so no worries if some machines don't have Plus) or any other programs that run from this Registry key (Example: MSPSRV.EXE; Print Agent for NetWare). Again, if a machine doesn't happen to have the file, the user won't notice an error message or anything. There are numerous Winpopup replacements available for download as of September 1998. Most of these can force-start and even prevent the user from stopping them. For all of Novell's clients, their supplied NWPOPUP works just fine. NWPOPUP however, looks for a Novell version of NETWARE.DRV (Yes I mean the old 16-bit driver) and won't work with MS's NETWARE.DRV stub. ------------------------------ Subject: 6.7. Why don't I get a NetWare login prompt when Win95 starts? This is related to a password caching problem I read about on Win95NetBugs. If the .PWL file is around 900 bytes, it will by-pass the NetWare login prompt and start Win95 straight away. Login scripts won't execute, and the only way to get them to execute is to Shut Down/Close all programs and log on as different user, and re-log in. To correct this, delete all .PWL files in your Win95 directory and re-start the computer. While you're at it, disable password caching via system policies. ------------------------------ Subject: 6.8. Bugs to watch out for, and patches * 6.8.1. Automatic Frame Detection Bug: Auto detect does not always work, especially in multi-protocol networks. Bring up IPX properties and manually select a frame type. Use 802.3 on pre-NetWare 3.12 networks, use 802.2 on 3.12 and later networks. * 6.8.2. NetWare C$ peer sharing bug: If you use Remote Administration, it may keep the Admin share active after you disconnect! Apply Service Pack 1 to fix. * 6.8.3. WAN routing tables keep getting trashed: When Win95 stations act like NetWare servers, all hell can break loose. SAP traffic can bog the network, RIP routing tables get re-built, clients might log in to a Win95 station instead of the real NetWare server. Don't use File & Print Sharing for NetWare to share out printers and files to non-Win95 clients; use the server and print queues like you're supposed to, or use Client/FPS for MS networks instead. More on print sharing via RPRINTER later. NOTE: Novell's latest patch sets for NetWare 3.11, 3.12, and 4.1 correct routing problems caused by lots of SAP traffic. Visit Novell's downloads site and get the base OS patch sets for your version of NetWare. Also, to prevent non-Win95 stations from trying to log in to Win95 machines using FPS for NetWare, set their Preferred Server switch to the server you're supposed to log in to. * 6.8.4. Password caching bugs: Win95 will store your login password locally, and the password encryption is easily cracked! Apply Service Pack 1 to fix, or better yet, disable password caching and use User Level Security for peer sharing. Check out the System Policies part to find out how to do force this. * 6.8.4.1. How do I disable password caching? Set up a system policy file, and include "Disable Caching of Login Password" or "Disable Password Caching" in Default Computer/Network. * 6.8.5. Server ABENDs when I start a Win95 machine (and other bugs): Any general mishap that occurs to the server that either causes an ABEND or otherwise kills it (I won't get into technical details; all I know is that Win95's demonstrated that it does bad stuff to NetWare servers). Check the steps you need to prepare the server or dis-arm the Win95 client. ------------------------------ Subject: 6.9. Top ten NetWare client mistakes 10. Using a '386 machine as a server with Pentiums running Win95 as clients 9. Installing File & Print Sharing for NetWare without knowing what you're doing 8. Enabling long filenames on a NetWare 3.11 server (Patch it first!) 7. Installing Novell's Client32 out of fear 6. Capturing LPT1: to a network printer when you have MSPSRV (Print Agent for NetWare) on some workstation 5. Turning on SAP advertising in a large routed network 4. Leaving "Auto-Detect" as the frame type for IPX 3. Not specifying the preferred server in Client for NetWare properties 2. Not updating the server before adding Win95 clients 1. Not using system policies (Always a good idea to use system policies for basic stuff) ------------------------------ Subject: 6.10. What does Client32 offer that MS's client does not? Well, this is rhetorical since Novell no longer supplies Client32. Grab Novell's 11 MB client download. ------------------------------ Subject: 6.11. What's this I heard about Client for NetWare only being NetWare 2.2 compliant? I've heard bullsh*t about this since Novell's tech note announcement regarding FPS for NetWare. In their tech document 2907903, Novell states that Microsoft's File & Print Sharing for NetWare identifies itself as a NetWare 3.12 NCP server, but really uses codes and packet types from NetWare 2.2 servers. This is why that Client32 can't see Win95 computers running FPS for NetWare, even with SAP advertising turned on. Novell has a reputation for accuracy so I think this is true. OK, I believe that MS reverse-engineered NetWare 2.2 to make FPS work. What I don't believe is everyone else claiming that the REST of Client for NetWare is only 2.2 compliant. NetWare 2.2 clients (and MS's FPS for NetWare) can't do Packet Burst. Client for NetWare and NetWare 3.12 servers (and better) can. NetWare 2.2 clients (like NETX) can't log into NDS trees. OK, neither can Client for NetWare, but the NDS add-on fills that gap. You're going to say that MS's NDS client is only NetWare 2.2 compliant? Novell's obviously published the NCP client and IPX specifications, because other developers (notably Artisoft and IBM) released NetWare clients for their products. Microsoft followed suit as well. I don't expect Novell to release NCP SERVER specs, which lead, most likely, to MS's decision to take NetWare 2.2 apart and re-write it as a Win95 service. And so what if FPS for NetWare only acts like a 2.2 server? I only recommended FPS for NetWare for sharing between Win95 machines and for Remote Administration. In these two jobs, FPS for NetWare works as designed. And here's a good one for Novell. In the same document, they claim that Remote Registry Service depends on FPS for NetWare. Wrong. (Insert buzzer sound here.) While Remote Registry depends on User Level Security, that security comes from a security API in Win95 (SECUR32.DLL), which goes through the security provider software that comes with the CLIENT. It does not depend on any file sharing service, though, yes, you would need file and print sharing to go peeking into someone else's hard drive remotely. If Novell wanted to make Client32 work with remote administration, they could license code from Microsoft (gasp!) and write their own security provider code. Bet they can't do that in NLMs. ------------------------------ Subject: 6.12. How do I share my hard drive or printer to other NetWare users? (Avoid if possible) Depending on whether the clients are Win95 clients or DOS clients, it can be either really easy or really messy! Complications include the SAP Advertising bug. If the clients are other Win95 machines running Client for NetWare, you merely have to install File & Print Sharing for NetWare networks, and specify your NetWare server as the security provider in Access Control. When you re-boot you can share out drives and printers to specific users in the NetWare server's Bindery. Now, if the client runs Win95 there's no real troubles, because Win95 will perform "Workgroup advertising" which works like the workgroup naming service (browse master) in WFWG, and this won't interfere with normal NetWare communication. To ease browsing troubles, set one of the sharing machines (like the one with the printer attached) and have Workgroup Advertising: "Enabled: Preferred Master" so the browse master control doesn't bounce from machine to machine, and broadcast useless messages to your server. Beware if you want to share to non-Win95 clients via FPS for NetWare; you have to turn on "Service Advertising Protocol" (SAP). This is how NetWare servers become aware of each other, and if you turn on SAP for a Win95 machine, it will appear in SLISTs and SYSCON etc as NetWare servers. You can even get connection info (Server version: "Windows 95 4.00.950, 250 user") from SYSCON. Problem is, not only would SAP advertising by a lot of Win95 systems cause a lot of network traffic, it could possibly kill any routing in an inter-network, and make DOS clients try to log in (as in Preferred Server login) to Win95 servers, which won't work. If you really want to screw up your network, share out your hard drive with the share name SYS and make a directory called LOGIN, and watch what happens. NOTE: Please don't do this, unless you LIKE getting beaten up by your network administrator. A better solution is to install FPS for MS networks and put either WFWG on the non-Win95 clients, or if they can't run Windows, Workgroup Connection for DOS. Both of these can run alongside Novell's NETX and VLM client software. OS/2 Warp Connect can load Windows and NetWare clients simultaneously as well. To save on memory on the DOS computers, consider using "Direct Hosting over IPX", which will remove the need to use NetBEUI and save 40 KB of memory or so. The absolute smartest way, however, is to use a common space on the server. Now printer sharing is another story... * 6.12.1. How do I share my printer through RPRINTER or PSERVER instead? Oh no... you can't run RPRINTER.EXE on a Win95 station because you have to run it before Windows loads! Well, you could use VLM and RPRINTER together but what's the point of real mode network software on Win95? There is a better way. And no, running it from WINSTART.BAT doesn't work. Download and Install Microsoft Print Agent for NetWare. Add a Service from Network control panel and hit "Have disk", then tell it to look in ADMIN\NETTOOLS\PRTAGENT on the Win95 CD-ROM, or wherever you extracted that download. Note that Print Agent will only work if you run Client for NetWare; it won't run with VLM or Novell's Client32. MSPSRV is a Queue Server (as opposed to a Remote Printer). BE WARNED: MSPSRV was a last minute hack by Microsoft and doesn't have the re-connect features, etc of Client for NetWare. In addition, it requires a Bindery print server object. NetWare 4.x Administrators: Use PCONSOLE to make Bindery mode print server objects. UPDATE September 1998: Microsoft released bugfixes to a LOT of the problems documented here. The files needed, however, appear unavailable for download. According to KB article Q132786, the following three files replaced will correct them: * MSPSRV.EXE v4.00.952 * NWPP32.DLL v4.00.952 or later * NWREDIR.VXD v4.00.952 or later These come with Win95 OSR 2.1 and 2.5, but I've prepared a special download that contains these updated files in case you don't have one of these releases (minus NWREDIR.VXD because I only had the NDS version). Just before you re-boot, change your IPX properties so you have Maximum Sockets and Maximum Connections set to at least 70, like RPRINTER/PSERVER's recommended setting of SPX CONENCTIONS=60 I suggest 70 instead of 60 because FPS for NetWare and Remote Registry require additional free sockets. And speaking of Sockets, you can't use a third party TCP/IP dialer if you plan to use MSPSRV, because it uses the Winsock interface over IPX. Now, also just before you re-boot, run PCONSOLE and create a new print server object. Add one printer to it named "Printer 0", set for Remote Parallel, LPT1 (Or just Parallel on NW 4.x servers). Attach it to a print queue on the NetWare server, if necessary, detaching the queue from any other print server object it was attached to. If you did detach it from an existing print server object, you will have to re-start that PSERVER, which usually means typing unload pserver and load pserver xxxxxxxx (whatever the print server object's name was) from the NetWare console. Now finally, re-boot the Win95 station and log in. The local printer attached to LPT1: will now have a "Print Server" tab in its properties sheet. Be warned: This tab has bugs, so follow these six steps precisely! 1. Select the Print Server tab and turn on "Enable print server for NetWare". If you get any evil error message just ignore it. 2. Select the NetWare server with your new pserver object, from the DROP DOWN LIST, even if it was already selected. 3. Select the pserver object you just created from the NetWare server drop down list. 4. Select how often you want this computer to check the queue for print jobs. The 30 second default is fine. 5. Hit OK. 6. Hit Start Menu/Shut Down, close all programs and log in as different user, and re-log in. Now all jobs in that NetWare queue will find their way to this printer. The reason you have to re-log in, is you will lose your drive mappings as soon as you OK those settings! MSPSRV is riddled with many dumb bugs, but Microsoft seems to swear by it. Check out KB article Q134747 for all the gory details. Every time you view this "Print Server" tab, it seems you will lose all your drive mappings. Re-logging in will restore them. You will also have to create a print server object for EVERY Win95 computer sharing a printer this way, because each system becomes a PSERVER look-alike (called a Queue Server), with all the requirements of a stand alone PSERVER.EXE or PSERVER.NLM; the only difference is that it multi-tasks. You will also have to remain logged in to keep MSPSRV running, as logging out causes all programs to close, including MSPSRV. It will re-start when you re-log in, or cancel the log in. On machines with very active printers, you might want to consider setting their Default Login to "Windows Logon" with a blank password, so they automatically log in to NetWare on power-up, and re-enabling Automatic NetWare Login for those specific machines, if you disabled it via system policies. Oh yeah, one more thing: Don't capture LPT1: to a network queue if you're running MSPSRV to share a printer. This might have worked in RPRINTER, but it doesn't work here. What will happen is that MSPSRV will suck the job off the queue and send it to the printer hooked up to LPT1, then that printer will send the job to wherever LPT1 was captured to, instead of to the local printer! I've seen this happen! Create a second printer in Win95 and have it point to the queue, if you're afraid of cutting in front of other people's print jobs. So to recap: Create a print server object with a single printer, for each Win95 computer sharing a printer through MSPSRV. Attach a print queue to each of them. Make sure you aren't capturing LPT1: to a network printer. Install MSPSRV on the Win95 computers sharing printers. Set Max Connections and Max Sockets to at least 70 in IPX/SPX properties. Re-boot to activate. Select the "Print Server" tab in the printer you want to share. Select the file server from the drop-down list and the print server object from its drop down list. Hit OK. Re-log in. And Pray. * 6.12.2. ...on a Directory Services network? I managed to get MSPSRV running on an NDS network. Originally, I thought switching the NetWare 4.1 version of PCONSOLE to Bindery mode, and creating Bindery queues and print server objects, would do the job. Apparently not. NDS clients can't readily print to Bindery print queues. So, after a lot of fiddling I realized that Novell's Quick Setup option in PCONSOLE does the job almost perfectly! Quick Setup creates a new NDS queue, NDS printer, and NDS print server object, and makes a Bindery version of the queue and print server object, granting printing rights to everyone in the NDS tree. A little extra fine tuning and it works straight away with MSPSRV. Here's what I did, with my example object names in (parenthesis): 1. Use PCONSOLE's Quick Setup option, in NDS mode, to create an NDS queue (Q1), printer (P1), and print server object (PS-INLINE). If you already have an NDS print server object, be sure to specify a NEW print server object and not use any existing ones. 2. Change the new printer object (P1) so it uses LPT1, IRQ 7, "Change forms as needed", and have it service the NDS queue (Q1). 3. Switch PCONSOLE to Bindery mode (Press F4), edit the Bindery queue (Q1) so its settings match the NDS queue. Add the Bindery print server object (PS-INLINE) to the list of print servers for this queue. 4. Edit the Bindery print server object (PS-INLINE) so its settings match the NDS print server object, and create a Bindery printer within this object with the same name as the NDS printer object (P1), and the same settings (printer number 0, LPT1, IRQ 7, Change forms as needed). Have this Bindery printer service the Bindery queue (Q1). The big catch is that Bindery configurations aren't accessed by NDS objects, or vice versa, as PCONSOLE's warning tells you. Heed that warning. 5. With all that accomplished, the NDS objects and Bindery equivalents will work together as if they were one set of objects. Now, go to the Win95 station running MSPSRV and have it service this print server object (PS-INLINE) as per the regular instructions. If you're switching an existing queue to this new print server, you'll need to stop and re-start PSERVER.NLM on the server so it won't try to service that queue anymore. All this fiddling may take a while, but it's the quickest way I could get it working, so that both NDS and Bindery clients can print to the printer shared via MSPSRV. And surprisingly, many of the bugs Microsoft mentioned in KB article Q134747 above, don't show up this time. Not bad at all! Yes, you have to do this for each Win95 station sharing a printer this way. Best of all, MSPSRV takes far less memory (a mere 64 KB on the workstation) than Novell's NPRINTER Open Beta. Rob Menasco outlined a few additional things to watch out for: * Go through the Print Server tab and reselect all items, click on "Apply". (This is documented in the MSPSRV KB article above; reselect the print server from the drop down list) * Re-boot, make sure print server is active. I do a USERLIST from DOS and look for an attached print server in PCONSOLE. * In the Spool button on Printer Setup: Set to "Direct Print" and "Bi-Directional". This fixes the unknown system error. (I gather this is so MSPSRV writes to LPT1: directly, rather than through the Win32 print API) * Watch for the source or error messages. The Spool errors come from SPOOL32 or the PRINTERS folder. * Watch for Rights problems (Use WINDOWS_PASSTHRU account; make sure it has rights to the spool). ------------------------------ Subject: 6.13. How do I make Win95's cool network features work on NetWare? It took a bit of practice but I managed to get everything working, including Remote Registry. Some basic items to remember when installing Client for NetWare alongside of these cool features: * Use IPX Maximum Connections and Maximum Sockets values of 32 each (70 if using MSPSRV too) * Create a separate Administrators group if you have a team of administrators to simplify setting up Admin permissions. * Set aside lots of space (250 MB total about) on your SYS: volume for user profiles. (About 200 KB per user) * Install any patches needed to make long filename support work, in fact, install the base OS patch set for your version of NetWare. * Create a WINDOWS_PASSTHRU user with 0 KB disk space limit, a blank password, and no privileges whatsoever. (This is so you can administer workstations that don't have anyone logged in to. You can do without this account, but someone will have to log into that station before you can remotely administer it. Kinda pointless actually.) So here's how to do all those cool features... * 6.13.1. System Policies Prepare the CONFIG.POL file using POLEDIT.EXE (On the Win95 CD-ROM) and copy it to your Preferred Server's SYS:PUBLIC directory. I finally verified this and sure enough, it reads from SYS:PUBLIC. Make sure that everyone has read and file scan rights to this directory, including GUEST if you have such a user. Useful policies for NetWare networks include: * Network path for Windows files * Remote Update: Automatic (Use default path. In this case, the default path is \\loginserver\SYS\PUBLIC\CONFIG.POL) * Disable/Enable Long Filename support (You have three choices here, disable, enable, enable for NW 3.11 or older servers) * Disable Password Caching * Disable File and Print Sharing Controls (Remote Administration still works) * Disable Automatic NetWare Login * Preferred Server * Disable SAP Advertising * User-Level Security (Use your server's name as security provider) * 6.13.2. System Policies on a DS network Microsoft's Services for NDS has some pretty cool extensions to this policy logic; you can enforce policies dependent on whatever level on the NDS tree you log in to (whatever your current context is), including specific Organizational Units, or the entire Organization. All this stuff only works if you installed MS's Services for NDS in addition to the Client for NetWare, and you're doing NDS logins. Otherwise, for Bindery logins, it still reads CONFIG.POL from SYS:PUBLIC. Let me make that clear: The NDS client has two separate rules, one for a Bindery login (Same as for original Client for NetWare) and one for a DS login. You need to specify the DS policy file and the Bindery policy file separately if users switch between DS and Bindery logins. To add NDS policies, change your POLEDIT template to the MAPLE.ADM template included with Services for NDS. Then load your previously-made CONFIG.POL file and make the appropriate NDS policy changes. All other policy settings made from ADMIN.ADM will stay unchanged. Bring up your Organization and Organizational Unit icons up in Network Neighborhood. If you have Admin privileges in these units, bring up properties for them. You'll see an "NDS Administration Settings" tab. Here, enable system policies and specify the volume name (including context, such as MYSERVER_SYS.MYORG) and file name (including path, such as PUBLIC\CONFIG.POL) for the policy file. The name need not be CONFIG.POL; it can be INLINE.POL or whatever, but you should make sure that the policy file is in a public place, such as the good old PUBLIC directory. Do this for each Organizational Unit and for the whole Organization as you see fit. Both Bindery and DS policies can come from the same CONFIG.POL file. NOTE: Policies don't flow down the NDS tree like other properties do. You will have to re-apply the policy setting to each Organizational Unit within your master Organization, or you may use different policies for each Organizational Unit. Two very useful NDS policies (Include these in the Organization's properties along with other basic policies): * Load NetWare DLLs at Startup (To make some dumb NDS apps work. Also copy the DLLs themselves from SYS:PUBLIC\CLIENT\DOSWIN to SYS:PUBLIC) * Allow only NDS logins (To prevent User Profile and System Policy screwups) LICENSING ALERT: If you maintain multiple servers and one policy file, a single login will consume one license on the default login server, AND on the server with the policy file! If these are the same server there's no problem, but if the policy file is on a different server (as you specify with the NDS Admin settings), Win95 won't log out from that server until the user logs out from that station (Perhaps not until shutdown?) One workaround could be to use that Win95 NCP server, as suggested in section 6.16.7 below, to store the policy files (which has a "250 user" license, if SYSCON is to be believed). To accomplish this, first add the Win95 machine in question to the DS tree, using NWADMIN, as a NW 3.12 (or other non-DS) server. Then add a volume object which matches one of that machine's share names. (You need this because the policy file has to exist on a defined DS volume!) Finally, copy that policy file there and specify it in the NDS Admin settings as normal. This is a hair-brain scheme; I can't test it because I don't have access to a DS network to try it on. * 6.13.3. Group Policies You will need to include group policy support on each workstation to enforce policies for GROUPS of users, and the groups themselves must exist in the server's Bindery or Directory. To add group policy support, run Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup, hit "Have Disk..." and pick the path on the CD-ROM ADMIN\APPTOOLS\GROUPPOL, and select Group Policy support. Once done, Win95 knows to grab policies you set for groups of users as well as specific users. You can automatically install group policy support on workstations by adding Group Policy support, using INFINST.EXE to add it to the server copy. * 6.13.4. User Profiles and Roving Desktops Win95's Client for NetWare stores a user profile in their MAIL directory, so be sure you give each user one. SYSCON automatically creates a MAIL directory for each new user. The Win95 station copies their profile to the MAIL directory on log out, and reads it in on log in. You should enforce "Enable User Profiles" as a system policy, to keep multiple profiles straightened out. Now regarding Roving Desktops. The Desktop directory and Start Menu directory (which as you would recall, are just a bunch of .LNK and .PIF files) get copied to the user's MAIL directory too, if they turned on "Include Desktop" and "Include Start Menu" in Passwords/User Profiles. Because Shortcuts have long filenames, you need to enable LFN support on the SYS: volume. This will only work on patched NW 3.11, NW 3.12, or NW 4.x servers with the OS/2 name space installed. Enforce LFN support via system policies. You should also ensure you have enough space on your SYS: volume for the shortcuts! Microsoft recommended setting aside 150 KB per user, but my own custom profile eats 250 KB easily! Services for NDS stores a user profile in the user's HOME directory instead of the MAIL directory, so make sure you define a home directory for each user, but the same rules regarding roving Desktop and Start Menu (LFN support, space requirements) apply. NDS clients can perform Bindery and NDS logins, so it is possible to have two sets of profiles for each user, one in their HOME directory and one in their MAIL directory! You should enforce NDS logins only, via system policies, to prevent this mix up. Remember that MS's NDS client has two separate policy rules for Bindery and DS logins. * 6.13.5. User-Level Security Quite easy. Do it through System Policies. In the CONFIG.POL you create, specify User-Level Access, and type in the name of the server, and specify the type of server as NetWare server. If you do this on a DS network, the server you specify needs Bindery Emulation turned on. To do this, make sure you have this somewhere in your AUTOEXEC.NCF file on the server: Set Bindery Context = 0=MYORG (and how many other OU= entries you want) * 6.13.6. Remote Administration Install FPS for NetWare or FPS for MS networks, install Remote Registry service, and enable User level security (No choice really for FPS for NetWare). Keep SAP advertising OFF. Then, from any other Win95 station, log in as SUPERVISOR or ADMIN and get properties on the Win95 station from Network Neighborhood. Use the new Tools tab to access administrative programs. Of the available remote admin tools, Net Watcher will also work for viewing activity on the NetWare server, as well as the Win95 machines. Net Watcher grabs the same information made available via SYSCON. You may remove users from the server as needed too. There is one bug in Remote Administration, that makes the remote system keep sharing its hard drive, even when you end the Remote Admin session. Install Service Pack 1 on the remote station to correct this. To see if you have this bug, Administer the target machine (so you can view its HD contents) then try logging in as someone else and hit Start\Run... and type in \\machine\C$. If this brings up a window with that drive's contents, you have the unpatched services on there. Again, apply SP1 to fix it. The most wicked tool available, Remote Registry, lets you edit the remote machine's registry to fix Win95-specific problems. You need this service is you want to run System Monitor, REGEDIT, or POLEDIT to monitor or edit the remote machine. * 6.16.7. Remote Admin on a DS network Remote Administration (and many of Win95's NetWare add-ons) depend on Bindery services running on your preferred server. Net Watcher and Administer work without hassles, but anything requiring Remote Registry (System Monitor, REGEDIT, POLEDIT) needs a separate Bindery server to act as security provider. This is a SECUR32 bug in MS's NDS client that they admitted to in KB article Q143398. If you use the regular Client for NetWare on a DS network, you can use Remote Registry on machines that have the NDS client. So, if you can live without Remote Registry, or if you use the regular Bindery client on your Admin machine, you can treat the administrative setup like you would for a Bindery network. Of course you can't run NWADMIN then, but... I did manage to get Remote Registry running on an NDS network about the same time I got MSPSRV working. Remember where MS said you needed to have a separate Bindery server to provide security? Well... Win95 with FPS for NetWare acts as a Bindery server, so why not use another Win95 station as a security provider? It does work! And I was able to log in to the NDS tree and run Remote Registry, and NWADMIN, on other stations with users logged into the NDS tree, and FPS for NetWare worked normally too. This trick comes in handy if you also have multiple servers and you're running into the licensing problem I mentioned in section 6.13.12; this Win95 machine can also hold the policy file and not eat up any licenses on your "real" servers. Remember: You only need to do this if you want to use Remote Registry service on a Win95 DS client running MS's services for NDS in a DS network, and you're using MS's Services for NDS on the machine you're administering from. Net Watcher and Administer both work without this nonsense, and the standard Client for NetWare works with Remote Registry straight away. So here's what I did: 1. Set aside one Win95 computer (an 8 MB machine will do) and install Client for NetWare and FPS for NetWare. No other clients or services. Have its User Level Security settings point to your NDS server. Check that server's Bindery context so it at least has your Administrators' user names available. On that one machine ONLY, turn on SAP advertising and turn off Workgroup advertising. You might want to get the latest patches for NetWare 4.1, to prevent SAP traffic from killing any routing in your network. This machine won't work with Remote Registry, so don't bother installing it. 2. On all the other Win95 machines running NDS, change their User Level Security settings to point to this one Win95 machine. They can still have their original Preferred Server and Preferred Tree defaults the way they were. See that all these machines have Remote Registry service and FPS for NetWare, and they have SAP turned OFF. You can do this through System Policies, but the machines will have to re-boot once to make this take effect. 3. After rebooting the other Win95 machines, change their Remote Administration settings so they include users from the emulated Bindery on the security-providing Win95 machine. You can even specify this machine, if you wish, in MSBATCH.INF during a Win95 installation. 4. At this point, all Win95 stations except one are using that one Win95 machine for a security provider. That one machine is using the NetWare 4.1 server as a security provider, mirroring its user list. Remote Registry services will work as they did for the original Client for NetWare. If it prompts you for a password, use your login name and password. 5. (Optional) You can even enforce this via System Policies; you can add the single machine to the CONFIG.POL file (File/New Computer...) and have it use the NetWare 4.1 server for security and turn on SAP. Have the Default Computer settings use that one machine as provider, and turn OFF SAP. This way you don't have to go to each machine to change their security provider settings. This is a lot of work really. At this point, most sysadmins would've probably gone to Windows NT. ------------------------------ Subject: 6.14. My suggestions for preparing an automated Win95 installation In the last few weeks (8 AUG 96) many administrators asked how they can copy Win95 to several machines at once. Well, they are trying to use XCOPY to copy the whole Win95 directory. Let me get one thing straight: THIS DOESN'T WORK!!!!!!!!! Why doesn't a straight XCOPY work? * Long filenames * 20 MB of hidden files * Registry * Unique IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS * Program Files directory * Different system device drivers for different motherboard chipsets! OK? Image-copying Win95 doesn't work. Get over it. Would you image-copy a NetWare server? An OS/2 client? An NT client? No. So don't try to image-copy a Win95 client. Make a server based installation using the steps below, and automate as much of the setup as you can. This way, you can run a Win95 setup from the server and it would take just a little longer than a straight XCOPY would, but be a lot cleaner. So, if you're building a Win95 network based on NetWare servers, here's my suggestions. These come from my NDS experiments, so you can omit any references to the NDS add-on if you aren't using a DS network. I based this scenario on workstations that have their own hard drives (minimum 200 MB) and copy all Win95 files to the station. The stations themselves had these components automatically added to them: * Client for NetWare Networks * IPX/SPX Protocol * Net card driver of your choice * File and Print Sharing for NetWare Networks * Microsoft Remote Registry * Microsoft Print Agent for NetWare * Services for NetWare Directory Services Believe me, don't waste time with minimal shared installs if you can avoid it. You can do shared installs of the apps themselves later. The stations featured full client functionality, Queue Server capability as needed, and Remote Admin access. Optionally, you can replace FPS for NetWare with Client for MS and FPS for MS networks. The key to making Remote Admin work is to have some kind of file sharing service and some kind of security provider. FPS for MS networks does work with NetWare servers acting as a security provider. If you do this, make sure you make the NetWare login the primary login, and make sure the machines have enough memory to handle both clients. If you're doing this on 8 MB machines or you're tight on memory, just stick with the single client and services. 1. Download and install the base OS patch sets for all your NetWare servers, and download the Admin edition of Win95 Service Packs. 2. Make an Administrative installation of Win95 using NETSETUP.EXE on one, or more, of your servers. You will need to prepare one Win95 client to perform the Admin installation from, and this machine will probably become your admin workstation. Prepare this Admin machine just like you would any of the targets. You could also make up your policy file using POLEDIT.EXE, and copy it to the server. 3. Use INFINST.EXE to apply the service pack to the Admin copy. Run INFINST, give it the Admin copy's UNC path (\\server\SYS\PUBLIC\WIN95 or whatever), give it the path to the Admin service pack, and let it install. 4. Keep using INFINST to apply the needed additional components (Services for NDS, Remote Registry, MS Print Agent, etc) to the Admin copy. Remote Registry and Print Agent are on the CD-ROM in ADMIN\NETTOOLS\REMOTREG or \PRTAGENT. Don't forget to include the Group Policy support here too, if you have group policies. 5. Exit INFINST and run BATCH.EXE (The new version that comes with the service pack) and make all the settings you need. In the list of Services, pay special attention to the ordering of services (NWREDIR4, NWSERVER, REMOTEREG, PSERVER) for those three, because MSPSRV (the PSERVER entry) will balk if you add PSERVER before NWREDIR4. I know it sucks. You can switch them around later if you need. Use BATCH.EXE to make any settings you want for the automated install, but be extra sure to keep "Immediately re-boot PnP and PCI machines" turned off to prevent Setup from exiting prematurely. COOL TRICK: Use BATCH.EXE's "Read settings from Registry" to copy the Admin machine's settings. Finally, save the settings with filename MSBATCH.INF to the Win95 Admin copy's directory. 6. Make up a network boot disk so you can access the server, and boot up a target workstation so you can try installing Win95. Keep the Admin machine on and logged in so you can make quick fixes during this test. 7. As Setup runs, you should be allowed to install the right net card driver. Also, when that network screen comes up, make sure you don't get any errors about "Print agent cannot be installed with...". If you do, change the ordering of services back in BATCH.EXE and try again. Cancel the Setup here and try again, until said message does not come up. PRTAGENT should be the LAST entry in the Services box back in BATCH.EXE. 8. Pay attention to any error messages that occur during file copying. You will probably get an error that it couldn't find MSNDS.BAT or some such file. If so, go to your ADMIN machine and copy the needed files from the NDS client copy to the shared copy of Win95, then hit "Retry" on the test machine. You will only have to do this ONCE; since the file now exists it won't complain the next time you try. 9. During the second part of Setup, if you get any messages saying it found new hardware and it wants you to re-start the computer, hit "NO" so Setup can finish. Wait until Setup finishes before allowing the system to re-boot. 10. After Setup finalizes the settings, check to make sure everything works. Inspect the network properties so all your settings took as you specified. You can then do some final tuning, like setting the [vcache] entry in system.ini, and take whatever settings you did in your final tuning, and use INFGEN.EXE to have them install automatically next time. 11. Once you're comfortable with your automatic setup, make a few copies of that boot disk and happily start making workstations. You can continue to add components to this server copy and install from them as needed (like the dial-up scripter, Ben Goetter's Widgets for Exchange, etc). NOTE: If you want to maintain more than one Admin copy of Win95, yes, you CAN image-copy this Admin installation to multiple SERVERS. Make up one good Admin copy, then spread it to all your servers in your WAN if you choose. 90% of the NetWare networks out there have remote printers I'm quite sure people want to print to. There is no harm in installing MSPSRV on every machine (it only eats 64 KB of disk space, and it won't take up memory unless you invoke it), or Remote Registry, or File & Print Sharing if you disable file and print sharing controls via System Policies. If you add components to the server install AFTER you installed the workstations, you can usually copy said components from Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup, then hitting "Have disk" and pointing to the server copy of Win95. Anything you can install using INFINST.EXE is installable from this control panel, and it will show in the list of components to choose from. Definitely see about including a [vcache] setting in a custom INF file you can create with INFGEN, and install it automatically for a maximum cache size (1024 KB) to make room for MSPSRV and Remote Registry. INFGEN.EXE is a very valuable tool for inserting custom settings. You can copy your computer's .INI or Registry settings to this .INF file, then install those settings to the server copy using INFINST. It's only available with the Win95 Service Pack's Admin edition. Subject: 7. Networking in General * 7.1. Windows 95 networking basics you MUST know * 7.2. How do I connect to... + 7.2.1. ...other Windows 95 computers? + 7.2.2. ...other Windows for Workgroups computers? + 7.2.3. ...Windows NT servers and Windows NT domains? o 7.2.3.1. How do I get Win95 to honor NT %username% ? o 7.2.3.2. Bugs to watch out for, and patches o 7.2.3.3. How do I disable password caching? o 7.2.3.4. How do I log in to multiple domains? o 7.2.3.5. Top ten NT network mistakes + 7.2.4. ...Banyan Vines( tm) servers? (Who uses this anyway?) + 7.2.5. ...LANtastic( tm) servers? (Yes Virginia there IS a 32-bit LANtastic!) + 7.2.6. ...AppleTalk (tm) AFP servers? + 7.2.7. ...IBM OS/2 LAN Servers? + 7.2.8. ...other network servers? (DOS client advice) + 7.2.9. ...The Internet? * 7.3. How do I share my hard drive or printer to... + 7.3.1. ...other Win95 users? o 7.3.1.1. ...on The Internet? + 7.3.2. ...other Windows for Workgroups users? + 7.3.3. ...Macintosh (tm) users? + 7.3.4. ...other computers' users? (SAMBA network clients) * 7.4. How do I run DOS TCP/IP or packet-driver apps in DOS sessions in Win95? * 7.5. How do I print to HP JetDirect (tm) printers on the network? + 7.5.1. Port Aliasing, or How do I print from DOS programs to JetDirect Printers? * 7.6. How do I use these cool networking features... + 7.6.1. ...system policies? o 7.6.1.1. ...on a Windows NT network? o 7.6.1.2. ...on another network with a 32-bit client? o 7.6.1.3. ...on another network with a DOS client? o 7.6.1.4. ...on a peer to peer Win95 network? (It is possible, but not easy!) + 7.6.2. ...user profiles? o 7.6.2.1. ...on a stand-alone workstation? o 7.6.2.2. ...on a Windows NT network so it'll follow the user around? o 7.6.2.3. ...on another network with a 32-bit client? (Not possible on DOS clients) o 7.6.2.4. Why user profiles is a really cool and useful feature! + 7.6.3. ...remote administration? o 7.6.3.1. ...on a Windows NT network? o 7.6.3.2. ...on a Peer Win95 network? + 7.6.4. ...user level security to shared drives and printers? + 7.6.5. ...server based installation? * 7.7. Windows 95 has (this security bug). How do I fix... + 7.7.1. ...the "cancel" button on the login window? + 7.7.2. ...the Samba bug I heard about? + 7.7.3. ...the password caching bug? o 7.7.3.1. How do I disable password caching? o 7.7.3.2. How to enable user level access to eliminate the need to cache passwords * 7.8. Visiting Rich Graves' Win95NetBugs site for details ------------------------------ Subject: 7.1. Windows 95 networking basics you MUST know I briefly described NDIS 3.1 back in the Hardware section, but I'll cover it quickly here again. It's a Plug & Play version of Microsoft's Network Device Interface Spec, which lets you do cool stuff like disconnect from the network when you undock your notebook, then re-connect as soon as you insert a PCMCIA network card, or dial in with your modem. Win95 has four classes of network components: Clients (For using shared resources), Services (for sharing or controlling shared resources), Transport Protocols (To communicate over network cards), and the network cards themselves. Protocols can use any network card, and usually, clients and services can use any protocol (there are specific dependencies, such as Client for NetWare on IPX/SPX Protocol). Clients are actually file system drivers, which use local caching (VCACHE) to off-load the server a bit. NDIS 3.1 software does NOT occupy conventional memory, so if you have all Win95 clients, services, drivers, and protocols, you can run your DOS programs within Win95 without worrying about how much RAM you have. This goes for IPX network games too. All net components in Win95 should conform to this, otherwise don't waste your time. ------------------------------ Subject: 7.2. How do I connect to... * 7.2.1. ...other Windows 95 computers? Get a Win95 compatible net card for each machine, tie the cards together however they're supposed to tie together, and install these components on it: * Client for MS networks * Win95 net card driver (may also be Dial-up Adapter: See section 8.5.1 for connecting via modems) * NetBEUI Protocol (Or any single common protocol; NetBEUI's the easiest to set up, but IPX will get you a bit more speed. If using dial-up, ALWAYS use NetBEUI) * File & Print Sharing for MS Networks Usually, when you insert a net card for the first time, Win95 Setup will install Client for MS and Client for NetWare networks, and all the needed components, at the same time. After everything works you can remove unneeded stuff to make it faster. Use unique computer names and a common workgroup name in the Identification tab. To ease browsing difficulties, set aside one computer to be turned on all the time (the one that has the printer is a good candidate), and set "Browse Master: Enabled" on that machine's File & Print Sharing properties. If one of them is a dial-up server (See section 8.5.1), make the dial-up server the "browse master" instead of the dial-up client. * 7.2.2. ...other Windows for Workgroups computers? Set up the Win95 machine as you would for networking Win95 machines together. The WFWG machines use the same protocols, from the Transport protocol up, as Win95 does. On the WFWG machine, tell it to install Microsoft Windows Network support. Set aside one Win95 machine to act as Browse Master, as Win95 machines take browse master precedence over WFWG machines. This will ease browsing troubles. Set that machine's FPS properties to "Browse Master: Enabled". NOTE: If you use IPX Protocol on the Win95 machine and you're connecting to WFWG servers, turn on "I want to enable NetBIOS over IPX", because the WFWG servers normally use NetBIOS over IPX. Otherwise change the WFWG station's protocol to "IPX/SPX Transport", instead of "IPX/SPX Transport with NetBIOS". Microsoft refers to this as Direct Hosting over IPX, rather than through NetBIOS, which explains the speed boost you'd get. * 7.2.3. ...Windows NT servers and Windows NT domains? Microsoft released Windows NT 3.51 purely to support Windows 95 clients. If you have Windows NT servers or workstations and Win95 workstations, upgrade to NT 3.51. Save yourself the hassles. If you aren't using NT domains, you can connect to the NT workstations and servers as you could any MS Windows Network client; install Client/FPS for MS networks. Client for MS Networks can also perform NT domain logins, similar to how the NetWare client performs NetWare logins. You just specify that you want to log in to a domain in the Client for MS properties. You needn't specify the name of the domain controller; just the name of the domain. Unlike the domain client in Windows for Workgroups, however, you log in to the domain first, then into Windows. Upon re-boot, Win95 gives you an MS Client login prompt. Feed it your user name and password, and your NT login script will execute. * 7.2.3.1. How do I get Win95 to honor NT %username% ? (and other NT user variables) Win95 isn't Windows NT, so it can't receive NT user profiles which include the environment variables. However, there's a cool LanManager utility that works on NT servers: PUTINENV. PUTINENV copies all the LanManager user variables (including %USERNAME%) to a DOS client. But it only copies them to the local DOS session's environment; you will need to copy the variable to the global Windows environment with WINSET, a utility that comes with the Win95 CD-ROM. So, to copy the user variables over during a login, copy PUTINENV.EXE and WINSET.EXE to the domain controller's NETLOGON share, then add these lines to the login script: \\server-name\NETLOGON\PUTINENV L \\server-name\NETLOGON\WINSET USERNAME=%USERNAME% (Repeat the WINSET line for any other user variables in the user's NT profile.) You could also map a drive and run the programs from that mapped drive, or even from the client's local hard drive. Since Win95 supports commands using network paths, however, it's far easier to just copy them to the server. For interest's sake, PUTINENV also works with Windows for Workgroups clients. Of course WINSET won't work, being a Win32 program, but you could use the same script for WFWG and Win95 clients without harm. NT clients will GPF on running WINSET too. Read the note on Rich Graves' Site. Windows Magazine also has many tips on writing NT login scripts, and have a sample master login script for your viewing pleasure. It includes a Win 3.1 equivalent of WINSET called SETW.EXE too. * 7.2.3.2. Bugs to watch out for, and patches Since Microsoft meshed Win95 and NT so closely together there are hardly "any" bugs, but Rich Graves does mention a few at his Win95NetBugs site. Hah, I lied! I know two bugs, and they relate to Remote Administration... Admin share (\\machine\c$) remains active after you terminate the Remote Admin session (I noticed this since Service Pack 1) Domain Admins can edit parts of an NT server's Registry! To prevent these bugs from creeping up, make sure you protect that Domain Admins group with your lives. There's the Password Caching bug of course, but you can disable password caching. * 7.2.3.3. How do I disable password caching? The best way is to set up a system policy which does so. You can disable caching of the login password, or caching altogether. * 7.2.3.4. How do I log in to multiple domains? Although you can't LOGIN to multiple domains, LOGIN and ATTACH are two very different actions. You will need to establish a Trust relationship between the two domains, a topic best covered in Microsoft's NT Resource Kit. Once set up though, you can map drives to shares on the other domains through the login script, or browse through Network Neighborhood, as though they were part of your domain. * 7.2.3.5. Top ten NT network mistakes 10. Using a LanManager server as a domain controller (hah hah hah) 9. Using an NT version earlier than 3.51 for Win95 clients 8. Not using system policies (Always a good idea to use system policies for basic stuff) (oops... not enough mistakes to fill the list! You got any?) * 7.2.4. ...Banyan Vines (TM) servers? (Who uses this anyway?) Banyan has a 32-bit client for Win95. By what I read on their installation instructions, it's a proper Win95 client for a VINES server. I don't have access to a VINES server, so if you have any insight on this, please tell me. sdawson@emporium.on.ca seemed to have very good success with the Banyan Win95 client, but he hasn't told me about user profiles, system policies, or any of the other cool toys. I can still use details on these. * 7.2.5. ...LANtastic (TM) servers? (Yes Virginia there IS a 32-bit LANtastic!) Artisoft has LANtastic 7.0 that pretty much works like Client for MS networks! You can map and browse server drives, share drives with the LANtastic service, capture and share printers, and have your connections saved per user, via User Profiles. Because they use the OS nicely, you could use the Client for NetWare, for example, and LANtastic client at the same time, if for some unusual reason you didn't want to use Client for MS for peer sharing. Now this is playing nicely! NOTE: Artisoft stopped offering their Client for LANtastic on their web site. Visit Artisoft's site or your favorite vendor for LANtastic for Windows 95. * 7.2.6. ...AppleTalk (TM) AFP servers? Miramar Systems has a Win 3.1 client and server for AFP, which they managed to hack into Win95. Miramar told me via E-MAIL that they will release a Win95 client and server in June 1996. With any luck it can co-exist with other Win95 components. COPStalk has a Designed for Win95 AFP client and server, but I haven't checked it out yet. You can obtain a trial copy from http://www.copstalk.com/ and see for yourself. * 7.2.7. ...IBM OS/2 LAN Servers? At first I thought MS would've abandoned OS/2 completely, but according to KB article Q149206, Client for MS networks will work with LAN Server domains. Specifically, they wrote that Client for MS works with OS/2 LAN server versions 1.2, 1.3 (and CSD), 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0. As such, you can treat the LAN Server domain like a Lan Manager or Windows NT domain. Set up the Win95 client appropriately. MS noted that file and print sharing are the only services that Client for MS supports. Apparently, IBM's LAN Server management software won't run on a Win95 station. Keep a Win 3.1 or DOS station handy for this. * 7.2.8. ...other network servers? (DOS client advice) Microsoft TRIED to allow weird DOS clients, with Win 3.1 support, to work in Win95 like they did in Win 3.1. Win 3.1 support for networks shows up as a stand alone Client in Network Control Panel. For example, if you install Novell NETX support, you don't need to add any protocols or net card drivers. The big limitation is you can only install ONE Win 3.1 network client. The best advice I can give is to only use the network support the vendor gives you. Don't try to use DOS clients alongside Client for MS Networks, for example. If you have to make more conventional memory available, you can use real mode HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE, and prepare a normal DOS configuration that will start up before Win95 does. At this point it would perform much like Win 3.1 did, but it should work. * 7.2.9. ...The Internet? Since Win95 comes with nearly all the components you need to connect to The Internet, the easiest way is to grab Microsoft's Internet Explorer and run it. The first time you run it, the Internet Setup Wizard comes up and asks you a bunch of questions only your service provider can answer. Get an answer sheet from your provider for these settings: * Dial-in phone number * Login Name (Not E-MAIL name); may include descriptors like %PPP or whatever * Login Password (Whatever you chose when you signed up) * IP address and Subnet mask if manually given, or use "My ISP provides me one" * DNS server addresses (in the form of XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX) * Full E-MAIL address * Mail server address (usually something like mail.nowhere.com) * Mail server username (Usually the same as your login name) * Mail server password (Usually the same as your login password) * Items to have handy: News server address, outbound mail server address, Gateway address (if not using default gateway) These are the items the Internet Wizard will ask you for. The Wizard will prepare IEXPLORE.EXE, the main Web browser, and Microsoft Exchange for sending and receiving electronic mail. It will also prepare a dial-up networking connection with all the right switches turned on, or off, and install all the needed components from your Win95 disks or CD-ROM. The only fine-tuning you'll need to do is to add the news server address to Internet Explorer (or whatever news reader you want to use), and maybe add an Outbound Mail Server name to Exchange's Internet Mail properties, if the provider has a different server to process outbound mail. About 99% of us will connect to The Net using a modem and a dial-up line, but for the rare few of us that have a direct network connection, the Wizard will work with that too. Oh yes, it will make you use Internet Explorer. No matter; just use it to get your favorite Web browser, such as NCSA Mosaic for Win95, or (ACK!) Netscape, and install that afterwards. You can always re-run the setup wizard if the provider's settings change, or if you change providers. You'll find it in your Accessories group on the Start Menu. I cover the rest of the Internet stuff in a separate page. ------------------------------ Subject: 7.3. How do I share my hard drive or printer to... * 7.3.1. ...other Win95 users? Install File & Print Sharing for MS networks in your network setup. If you set up the computer like I told you back in the How do I connect to other Win95 computers? section, this'll already be done. Next, right-click on any drive or folder you want to share, and select the "Sharing" menu. You can specify a read-only or full access share like you could in Windows for Workgroups, or make it dependent on password. * 7.3.1.1. ...on The Internet? This is pretty tricky because you need to run NetBIOS over TCP/IP. You can't just type "\\206.116.13.2" and expect a list of shared resources to appear. Running NetBIOS over TCP/IP usually requires a WINS server, but you can also do NetBIOS naming through DNS, or by manually writing an LMHOSTS file, neither of which I recommend. One problem I noticed is, if you specify a name in HOSTS or LMHOSTS, the machine you're referring to had to have the same name in its Identification tab, on its Network Properties. This tidbit I got from Rich Graves' site. Your easiest bet is to obtain a free FTP server for Win95, available at www.windows95.com. Then the other user can just use their FTP client or browse using their web browser, using "ftp://206.116.13.2" as the URL. To find out what your IP address is (if you have IP addresses assigned to you on the fly), run WINIPCFG.EXE from the Win95 directory and bring up properties of the "PPP Adapter", while you're connected. NOTE: I've been asked to include Winserve's public WINS servers in this category. Problem is, I don't like the notion of running MS networking across the Internet because of the inherent security risks. At least someone running an FTP server knows they're sharing over the Internet, whereas someone who happens to have the full suite of MS networking might not. * 7.3.2. ...other Windows for Workgroups users? Just like you would for Win95 users. Be careful if you use User Level security, because WFWG clients won't recognize weird security providers, like NetWare servers. Either share out to "The World", or specify a Windows NT domain as your security provider, and have the WFWG client log into it. Or, simply use Share Level security a'la WFWG. NOTE: If you chose IPX as your base protocol between Win95 and WFWG computers, you should decide if you want to use NetBIOS or not, because WFWG has one default (NetBIOS ON) and Win95 has another default (NetBIOS OFF). Neither WFWG nor Win95 need NetBIOS over IPX unless you're specifically running NetBIOS apps, so on the Win95 machine have "I want to enable NetBIOS" turned off in IPX properties, and change the protocol on the WFWG machines to "IPX/SPX Transport" instead of "IPX/SPX Transport with NetBIOS". Microsoft calls this "Direct Hosting over IPX" which will give you a speed boost. Windows NT and Workgroup Connection for DOS also support Direct Hosting over IPX. * 7.3.3. ...Macintosh (TM) users? Miramar Systems will include an AFP and ASDP print service with their MacLAN product, which they plan to release in June 1996. (So where is it, now that it's February 1997?) In the meantime, they managed to hack in their Win 3.1 Personal MacLAN into Win95. COPSTALK is another AFP service, with the difference that it's a "true" Win95 service. Thursby Systems released a Client for MS Networks for the Macintosh, which works like any other MS client over MacTCP or Open Transport TCP/IP. This avoids needing special software on the Win95 machine and simplifies administering a network of PCs and Macs where NT Servers reign. * 7.3.4. ...other computers' users? (SAMBA network clients) MS Windows Network has a short name: SMB, or "Server Message Blocks". SAMBA is a GNU public-license SMB client for UNIX machines, with versions available for The Amiga and several other smaller systems. Visit one of many SAMBA FAQs, or visit the newsgroup comp.protocols.smb, or if you want to connect to Amigas, visit AMINET. Download the latest SAMBA for Amiga from any Aminet mirror and use SMBCLIENT on the Amiga to connect to Win95 machines. Linux users can mount Win95 shares as remote file systems; it comes with a complete SMB client (SMBFILE). SAMBA clients exploit a nasty file sharing bug in Win95 and WFWG; if the Win95 server shared out a directory, it will inadvertently share the entire hard drive with the same restrictions! Ack! Microsoft fixed this in Service Pack 1. ------------------------------ Subject: 7.4. How do I run DOS TCP/IP or packet-driver apps in DOS sessions? Originally I thought MS's TCP/IP would allow for DOS apps to use 32-bit TCP/IP in the same way IPX apps would (such as NetDOOM or Descent), but some TCP/IP apps provide their own complete TCP/IP stack, and use the pure packet interface (characterized by Packet Drivers that leave transport protocols to the apps themselves). There's an NDIS 3.0 packet driver you can install as a Win95 "protocol" at http://ndtl.harvard.edu/ndis3pkt/ or at ftp://nic.switch.ch/mirror/novell/drivers/ndis3pkt.zip which provides the packet driver interface for any network card. The driver is re-entrant so multiple DOS sessions can access it. The big catch is, if you use MS's TCP/IP Protocol at the same time, AND you have DOS packet apps that provide their own TCP/IP stack, you cannot have MSTCP and the packet app use the same IP address. You are effectively running two TCP/IP stacks (one for Winsock apps and the one provided by the packet app) and these can't have the same IP address. However, multiple DOS sessions running TCP/IP packet apps can use the same IP address. This packet driver can interpret TCP/IP packets from DOS packet apps and multiplex them. This is a special case which a packet driver would not normally handle. So with this aside, to install the virtual packet driver for Win95: 1. Download the ndis3pkt "protocol" from the above address 2. Install a net card driver for Win95 3. Install the packet driver as a Protocol 4. Check the Bindings tab for each net card you have, and make sure you enable the Virtual Packet Driver only for the cards you want to use it for (turn it OFF for the Dial-up Adapter). 5. Re-start the computer. Use your packet apps as normally in DOS sessions. ------------------------------ Subject: 7.5. How do I print to HP JetDirect (TM) printers on the network? Win95 includes a JetDirect service, which allows you to control and attach to printers with JetDirect cards installed. HP JetAdmin depends on IPX protocol, so install that as well. Once you install the JetAdmin service, you can print to the JetDirect printers like you could to any network print queue, but you cannot map a DOS LPT port to one. Read below, to learn how to create new DOS ports instead. * 7.5.1. JetDirect Port Aliasing, or How do I print from DOS programs to JetDirect Printers? NOTE: HP has updated JetAdmin software that may take care of the need to use this dumb Alias Port Monitor. I urge you to get the latest JetAdmin update from HP's software support site at http://www.hp.com/cposupport/indexes1/win95s.html to get DOS session printing capability in "direct" mode. NOTE: This isn't needed if you use HP JetDirect printers via a NetWare or other print server. The alias monitor itself does have other uses, and you can get it from ftp://ftp1.hp.com/pub/networking/software/alias1en.exe. One such example is 32-bit redirection to a disk file, or to another device. Originally I thought that MS's DLC protocol would allow for JetDirect access, as it did in Windows NT. Nope. I had the chance to attempt it myself and had to struggle with HP's Aliasing Port Monitor to make it work. Once you set up your JetDirect printer objects, install this dummy printer driver. This will install the capability to add "Alias Monitor" ports from printer properties. If you actually try to install the dummy printer to the end though, it will fail. The port capability will install correctly, however. Then, install a new Windows printer, identical to your existing JetDirect printer, except after you finish, change its port. From the new printer's properties, in its Details tab, select "Add Port". Among the Local Port choices, select "Alias Monitor". Type in a valid DOS port name (such as LPT3:), a descriptor for it, and the name of the existing Win95 printer object (like "HP DeskJet 1200C (MS)", exactly as it appears in the Printers window). Once this is done, whenever you print to this port, it will print to the Windows printer it points to. You can change this port's target or other properties from "Port Settings". One advantage of this, is you can make your computer the print spooler for it, and use a shorter share name (the share name \\HP_Network_Printers won't work with Win 3.1 apps or Win 3.1 printer drivers). Another advantage is you don't have to install JetAdmin on each and every computer, if you do re-share it. NOTE: This is only the beginning of HP's apathy towards Win95. Notice how they supply ONE driver set for Win 3.1 and for Win95? Notice how "You must use the SETUP program!" when you try to add the driver with Add Printer? Just what the hell is HP trying to do here? Of course, HP's newest DeskJet 1600 drivers don't work with JetDirect printers this way because they're written for Win 3.1 and don't recognize this long \\HP_Network_Printers share name. I suggest getting a Lexmark PS4079 if you want good colour printing AND Win95 performance. ------------------------------ Subject: 7.6. How do I use these cool networking features... * 7.6.1. ...system policies? System Policies let you enforce a bunch of settings for Win95 computers on a network. This is real handy to disable long filename support for NetWare, or disable password caching, for example, without going to each and every computer on the network and editing SYSTEM.INI or the Registry. Copy the contents of ADMIN\APPTOOLS\POLEDIT from the CD-ROM, to a convenient directory that only you (the Administrator) have access to. The first time you run POLEDIT, it will ask you for a policy template. Choose ADMIN.ADM. There are other policy templates for other networks (including NDS), but ADMIN covers most of the stuff for now. Have a nice look at all the settings you can enforce on, enforce off, or not enforce. Notice you have three choices; an "On", "Off", and "Don't Care"; the "Don't Care" state means that the computer will use the setting it already has. "Default User" refers to people, and you can add unique policies for unique users if you have a central security provider (like an NT domain controller or NetWare server) by adding users to this policy file. "Default Computer" refers to computers, and you can add computers here as well, named by the "Identification" tab back in Network Control Panel. Definitely set these policies up at a bare minimum: * Network path for Windows 95 files * Remote Update: Automatic (Use Default Path). Remote Update refers to updating local settings from the policy file, and Default Path refers to the location of the policy file itself. The default path depends on the kind of network client installed (Microsoft Networks, NetWare, LANtastic, whatever) and this "Automatic" option only works if you have a Win95 client for a central server of some kind. You can do non-central policies too, but I'll cover that later. Save this policy file with the name CONFIG.POL and copy it to the path your client expects to find it. POLEDIT also works directly on a local Registry, which is really convenient if you don't trust yourself with REGEDIT. * 7.6.1.1. ...on a Windows NT network? Create the CONFIG.POL and copy it to the NETLOGON share of your primary domain controller. You can spread the policy file to all your backup domain controllers as well, in which case, the "Load Balancing" option can save some server overhead on slow WAN links. Useful policies for NT networks: * Log on to Windows NT (Specify domain name here too) * Workgroup (Use same name as the domain to ease browsing troubles) * Disable Password Caching * Enable Load Balancing (If you use multiple domain controllers per domain) * 7.6.1.2. ...on another network with a 32-bit client? Other Win95 clients will have their own policy templates and their own unique location for the policy file. Check with the vendor for the details. If there's no default path, you can enforce the "Manual Update" policy and specify a UNC path to the policy file (like \\SRV\POLICIES\CONFIG.POL), but you will need to run POLEDIT on each station to set this in each Registry. * 7.6.1.3. ...on another network with a DOS client? You will have to set the "Manual Update" policy and set a DOS Drive:\DIR\CONFIG.POL path on each station in each Registry. You will also need to map this network drive before then end of AUTOEXEC.BAT as well. * 7.6.1.4. ...on a peer to peer Win95 network? If you keep one Win95 station on all the time (Usually the machine with the printer attached) you can put a policy file there. You will still have to manually change the Remote Update path in each station, but this time it can be a UNC path. * 7.6.2. ...User Profiles? User Profiles are a really, really, cool feature of Win95. Not only can you set a personalized desktop for each user and have personal Start Menus, but you can have personalized settings for MS Exchange, Word for 95, or pretty much any program that stores user preferences in HKEY_CURRENT_USER in the Registry! Profiles will also follow a user around in a centralized network, copying their program settings to each station as required. To turn on User Profiles, run the Passwords control panel. Regardless of whether you installed Networking or not, you turn on "Users may select their own preferences" on the User Profiles tab. Custom Desktops and Start Menus are actually one of these user preferences. You can enable or enforce User Profiles, but it's up to the users if they want their shortcuts to be unique to them. Regardless of user profile preferences, Win95 creates a Profiles folder, and a sub-folder for each user to store a personal copy of USER.DAT, the user portion of The Registry. If the user chooses to have custom Desktops and Start Menus, it stores them in that folder as well. Deleting shortcuts from Win95's default Dekstop and Start Menu folders will not affect a user's personal Desktop or Start Menu. Profiles work best when you have all Win32 apps, and if you keep copies of the apps in the local hard drives, that you install the apps in the same place on each computer! The "C:\Program Files" Directory is a good place for apps in a User Profile environment. Keep the Windows directory the same name on all your workstations too. SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS: Be VERY VERY CAREFUL where you store your program settings! Hardware settings (like local cache directories or modem preferences) belong in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, mobile and user settings (like bookmarks or spell check preferences) belong in HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Test your software in a User Profile environment! Netscape Communications gets kudos from me in this regard; Navigator 2 and 3 support user profiles. * 7.6.2.1. ...on a stand-alone workstation? The Password Control Panel is always there, whether you have a network client loaded or not. In here, select the User Profiles tab, and select "Users can customize their settings". Specific users can choose to keep a custom Desktop and Start Menu included in their profile. When you aren't on a network and you have User Profiles turned on, you need to have a password for each user, otherwise it will happily automatically use the last password-less user's profile. Selecting "Shut Down" and "Close all programs and log on as different user" will let you enter your own name and password. * 7.6.2.2. ...on a Windows NT network so it'll follow the user around? NT clients keep their profiles in their HOME directory, so make sure you define a home directory for each user, in User Manager. NT servers 3.5 or later have long filename support built in, even for FAT file systems, so you have no worries regarding roving desktops and Start Menus... just the space requirements. Also, enforce "Enable User Profiles" through system policies, to keep multiple profiles straightened out. * 7.6.2.3. ...on another network? Roving User Profiles require a central storage space, and are specific to what network client you run. So the location of user profiles on that network depend on that client. This won't work with Client for MS networks without a Windows NT domain to log in to (So it doesn't work on just a bunch of Win95 machines together), but you can define a custom Desktop or Start Menu for each user, with POLEDIT. In Default User (Or whoever user) Shell settings, you can define a path for custom folders. The custom folders include Desktop, Start Menu, Programs, NetHood, and "Hide Start Menu Subfolders". So for each user (By selecting Edit/Add User) you can insert a custom path for these items. If you do this in one master CONFIG.POL file stored in one location, and you have "Remote Update: Manual Path" turned on, you can enforce a different Desktop and Start Menu for each user without a central server. Just make sure the path exists when Win95 starts (Either by using a UNC path, or by logging in before running Win95, in the case of real mode clients). If you also enforce user profiles through the central policy file as well, Win95 will store USER.DAT for each user on the machine, but it will not follow the user around. If you want the benefit of full roving user profiles, get a central server with Win95 client support, and check with the network OS vendor about user profile support, if it isn't an NT or NetWare server. Oliver Knorr says it is possible to use roving user profiles on a simple peer network. He explained some mistakes in the Win95 resource kit that MS documented in KB article Q135849. You first need to add Registry entries to each peer machine you want roving profiles to work on as described in the article. Then create a PROFILES.INI file on your central peer server (isn't "central peer server" a contradiction of terms?) and edit one Registry key on all the stations to point to that profiles.ini file. * 7.6.2.4. Why user profiles is a really cool and useful feature! One time I read a question on how to make Netscape 2.0 work with more than one user's E-MAIL settings, so it would work with more than one provider. The answer was simply: Turn on User Profiles in the Passwords Control Panel. With that, Netscape had different settings for each user, and what was better, each user had their own dial-up networking preferences stored under their own profile! User Profiles is cool because it offers a central control for personalized settings, regardless of whose program you run! The software developer doesn't have to account for multiple users for a given program; they need only store personal settings in the USER.DAT portion of The Registry, and let the OS take care of the rest. I know this works with these programs: * MS Office 95 suite * Corel Graphics suite 6.0 * MS Exchange * Netscape 1.2N up to 3.04 (You will need to fix the cache path for each user though, or accept its default) * NCSA Mosaic Other programs Designed for Windows 95 had better work with this. * 7.6.3. ...remote administration? The Passwords Control Panel has a "Remote Administration" tab that works only if you have networking installed. If you use a central server, you can assign administrative privilege to a SUPERVISOR or Domain Admin. First, install File & Print Sharing for either MS networks (for a pure Win95 or NT domain network) or NetWare (For NetWare networks). If you use FPS for NetWare, keep SAP advertising OFF. In addition, install the Remote Registry service from Network Control Panel, as a Service (in ADMIN\NETTOOLS\REMOTREG on the CD-ROM) on the remote machines. You can do this (and even enforce this) when you install Win95 as well. Now, if the workstations use User level security (highly advisable on NT Domains and NetWare networks), Setup will automatically enable remote administration for ADMIN and SUPERVISOR (NetWare) or DOMAIN ADMINS (NT Domain). If the stations use passwords instead of user lists (Share level security), or you don't have a central server, you will need to manually enable Remote Administration and supply a password to each station. Remote Administration settings will differ with each type of network client installed. Once done, you (the administrator) can control computers via Network Neighborhood. Right-click on any Win95 station and select "Properties". You will see a "Tools" tab that lets you edit the Registry, view network activity, or even browse the hard drives, on the remote computer. REGEDIT and POLEDIT also works on these stations. Of the tools listed, Remote Registry service is the biggest service (250 KB). To free up memory so you don't slow down the machines, check out How to Prevent Random Hard Drive Access, which also frees lots of memory for these services. * 7.6.3.1. ...on a Windows NT network? Install FPS for MS networks, install Remote Registry service, and enable User level security. Remote Admin privileges are automatically given to anyone in the Domain Admins group on the domain controller. Re-boot. Then, go to another Win95 station, log in as Administrator (or anyone else in Domain Admins) and get properties on the remote station from Network Neighborhood. WARNING: This service will allow you to remotely edit an NT Server's Registry! I was able to get in to several (but not all) Registry keys on my own NT server by logging in as a member of Domain Admins. I'd hate to think what could happen to my poor server if someone ran REGEDIT on this network with malicious intent! WARNING: Remember the NetWare C$ bug? It's back, this time in FPS for Microsoft networks! Now if you perform a Remote Admin session on a Win95 station and view its hard drives, the Admin shares (\\machine\c$) remain active, available for read-only viewing when a user types \\machine\c$ from Start Menu/Run. This bug may have always been around, but I suspect it emerged with Service Pack 1. * 7.6.3.2. ...on a Peer Win95 network? You don't need to install Remote Registry service on the workstations to use peer to peer remote administration. You only need a file and print sharing service. When you use the Admin tools, the target computer will prompt you for a password. Be sure to set this password on all the workstations you want to administer remotely. NOTE: According to the Remote Registry readme files, Remote Registry service only works if you use User Level Security from a central server. * 7.6.4. ...user level access? User Level access spares us the potential of lost passwords and multiple, security-killing, cached passwords, because the passwords remain on the central security provider. You need only log in once and type your password once, and you have access to any resources shared on the network that have you on their access list. Enable User Level security from Network Control Panel, in Access Control. Pick a security provider (the name of an NT domain, NetWare server, or other central server if your client/service software allows for it). The next time you re-boot, all your share requesters and password requesters will have user list requesters in their place. You could also enforce user level security via system policies. If the server is a NetWare 4.x server, you will need to set a Bindery context on it. This will allow all NDS clients access to any Win95 stations sharing resources via FPS for NetWare. Unusual combinations to avoid: * FPS for MS networks, using a NetWare server as security provider (WFWG stations can't get access then! Win95 machines could get access, however) * FPS for NetWare, using an NT server as a security provider (Quite impossible, as the NCP server doesn't recognize NT security) * FPS for NetWare, using Share level security (It won't let you; NCP servers don't allow separate logins) * 7.6.5. ...server-based setup and MSBATCH.INF? I'm going to probably create a new FAQ page dedicated to this in the new year. But in the meantime, here's some basic stuff to get your server based setup running. First, why do a server based installation of Win95 in the first place? * Automated installation of several workstations * Can apply software updates or widgets for everyone * Can apply special changes to the systems, hacks or otherwise, in all new machines quickly * Save disk space on workstations by running pieces of Win95 off the server Oops... that last one isn't such a good idea, because it requires real-mode (DOS) networking to start first, eating up conventional memory. I'd say, make a normal installation of Win95, then use shared copies of your apps to save disk space instead. I cover basics in page 2, but in addition to this, get the Win95 SP1 Diskette Set and use the updated INFINST, INFGEN, and BATCH tools instead of the ones that come with the CD-ROM. ------------------------------ Subject: 7.7. Win95 has (this security bug). How do I fix... * 7.7.1. ...the "cancel" button on the login window? You can demand log in for Win95 access, through system policies, if you use a central security provider with a Win95 client. This way, a failed log in or a canceled log in will give "Unable to log you in" errors. Be warned: CTRL-ESC at a login prompt will bring up the task manager, so you will also want to remove TASKMAN.EXE from that computer. Windows NT does not exhibit this bug, so if you're really paranoid about this bug you should consider using NT instead. Win95 is not as secure as Windows NT, but some other security measures will prove useful enough to keep the bad guys out. These include: * Remove the floppy drive from the computer once you install Win95 * Disable REGEDIT.EXE via system policies, and rely on Remote Administration * Remove TASKMAN.EXE from the system; the task bar replaces it anyway * If you insist on keeping the floppy drive in the computer, force it (through BIOS setup) to always boot from Drive C. Password-protect your BIOS setup too. * Edit MSDOS.SYS to prevent Safe Mode booting, force the system to always boot into Win95 on power-up, and to set the boot delay to zero. * Hide components of the Control Panel, such as Network, via system policies. You can hide quite a few Desktop components via system policies too. Check them out. * 7.7.2. ...the Samba bug I heard about? Install Service Pack 1. Or just disable the binding to File & Print Sharing for MS Networks to TCP/IP. Bring up TCP/IP properties for each net card, hit "Bindings", and turn off the binding to FPS for MS networks. Microsoft claims this bug happens when Samba clients issue "Illegal network commands" to the computer acting as a server. Fact is, this bug was in WFWG originally, and I suspect it's even in NT Server! Rich Graves has all the gory details. Microsoft seems to have many troubles with Samba clients and servers; there was even a Client for MS networks update in Service Pack 1 that fixed troubles with Win95 accessing a Samba server. * 7.7.3. ...the password caching bug? Install Service Pack 1 or disable password caching via system policies. * 7.7.3.1. How do I disable password caching? Password caching only happens if you have a Win95 network client installed, OR you have User Profiles enabled on a stand alone computer. The clients for NetWare and NT have separate caching restrictions (such as "Prevent caching of log on password") you can use, or you can disable password caching entirely, in the Network section of POLEDIT. * 7.7.3.2. How do I enable user level access to eliminate the need to cache passwords? Read all about it in User level security. You will need a central security provider (like an NT domain or NetWare server) for this though. ------------------------------ Subject: 7.8. Visiting Rich Graves' Win95NetBugs site for details He's at http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~llurch/win95netbugs/faq.html and while he's very anti-Microsoft, he does present the facts. Subject: 8. How do I connect to The Internet? And other dial-up networking questions * 8.1. TCP/IP under Windows 95 in a nutshell + 8.1.1. How do I set up TCP/IP through a network card? + 8.1.2. How do I set up TCP/IP through a modem? (Follow exactly to the letter, or else!) o 8.1.2.1. Should I get the ISDN/DUN 1.3 update if I don't have ISDN? o 8.1.2.2. Can I use two modems at the same time to speed up my connection? o 8.1.2.3. How come TCP/IP routing doesn't work if I have a net card AND dial-up connection? + 8.1.3. How can I share one dial-up connection over my network? * 8.2. How come I have to dis-connect from my NetWare server when just dialing to The Internet? * 8.3. How do I run my Winsock program? * 8.4. Using Trumpet (tm) and other TCP/IP stacks (Just don't!) + 8.4.1. WARNING: Netscape 32 Personal Edition's Setup Wizard screws up TCP/IP + 8.4.2. Obtaining Winsock 2.0 for Win95 * 8.5. How do I get dial up networking to work with other stuff besides The Internet? + 8.5.1. How do I connect two Win95 computers together with dial-up networking? o 8.5.1.1. How do I connect two Win95 computers together with Direct Cable Connection? + 8.5.2. I'm using DUN to connect to a NetWare server and the IPX address for me keeps changing! * 8.6. How do I get auto-dial to work? * 8.7. How do I set up auto-disconnect? + 8.7.1. How do I DISABLE auto-disconnect? * 8.8. My provider only has SLIP. Can I use that? (yes.) * 8.9. Dial-up networking won't save my password! How do I fix it? * 8.10. My computer hangs in the task "RNAAPP". How can I fix it? * 8.11. How can I track my time and costs on my connections? * 8.12. How do I use dial-up networking on a null modem cable? * 8.13. How do I write a dial-up script? + 8.13.1. How can I send a "modem break" in a dial-up script? * 8.14. How do I set up a dial-up server? + 8.14.1. ...for NetWare dial-in? + 8.14.2. Top five reasons to use Win95 as a dial-up server + 8.14.3. Top ten Dial-up Server mis-conceptions * 8.15. Top ten Internet/Dial-up mistakes ------------------------------ Subject: 8.1. TCP/IP under Windows 95 (Next five section fer Experten only; ist nicht fuer gerverken bei das dumbkoffen) So you don't trust the Internet Setup Wizard, eh? OK, here's TCP/IP in a nutshell. Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) comes with Win95 as an NDIS 3.1 protocol. So, aside from connecting to The Internet, you can use any other Win95 clients or services over TCP/IP as well, or at least, those that don't depend on a particular protocol. Now that's pretty cool, but we want to connect to The Internet, right? Win95's network setup also copies the Windows Sockets libraries, based on Berkeley University's UNIX Sockets interface. Winsock works over any protocol really, which is why Win95 Setup must replace any other WINSOCK.DLL with its own, but for The Internet we're primarily concerned with Winsock over TCP/IP. All Windows Internet apps use the Winsock interface, in one form or another. * 8.1.1. How do I set up TCP/IP through a network card? If you don't already have a network card installed, install it and load its Win95 driver. Then add TCP/IP protocol. TCP/IP has six property sheets, some of which affect all of TCP/IP, and others only affect the net card they're bound to: * IP address: Either have it select an IP address automatically, or give it an IP address and subnet mask directly. To perform automatic IP selection you need a BOOTP server or DHCP server operating within your local network. This is unique for each card using TCP/IP. NOTE: Thanks to MS short-sightedness again, Win95's TCP/IP won't auto-configure from a BOOTP server. Get the BOOTP addon desceibed below. * WINS configuration: To use Client for MS networks or any other NetBIOS apps over TCP/IP, you should have a Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) server accessible to you. Feed its IP address here, or if you have a DHCP server you can let it fetch WINS information from there. For regular Internet connections, select "Disable WINS Resolution". These settings affect all net cards using TCP/IP. * Gateway: To get to the rest of the Net, feed your router's IP address here. I don't believe Win95 will grab Gateway info from a DHCP server so ask your administrator for this value. This is unique for each card using TCP/IP. * DNS Config: This tab not only enables Domain Name Service for Winsock apps, it also enables NetBIOS name resolution over DNS. Select "Enable DNS" and feed it up to three addresses of DNS servers. If you have a local DNS and an Internet provider's DNS, you can enter both of them here. Yes, it does work. Also, if you wish, enter the domains you wish to enable NetBIOS naming for. For example, if you want to look for a server named \\JOE in the domain my-domain.com, insert my-domain.com into the domain search order list. For regular Internet access you can leave the search order fields blank. This tab affects all net cards using TCP/IP. NOTE: Supposedly, if you provide DNS info on a DHCP server and you leave DNS disabled here, Win95 will grab DNS info from the DHCP server. * Advanced: This is a useless tab, probably inserted to provide controls like TTL and hop count limits and such, but Microsoft chose to omit it. Too bad, because enough people complain about not being able to control them. Here are the settings I'm talking about. * Bindings: Very important tab if you don't want someone on The Internet poking in your computer. If you have File & Print Sharing for MS networks installed, turn off the checkmark to that service in this Bindings tab. This way, FPS won't work over TCP/IP, and no one on The Internet can get to your computer. This is unique for each net card using TCP/IP. * 4.00.950B users only: NetBIOS: If you don't use Client for MS networks over TCP/IP, you have the option of disabling NetBIOS over this protocol, which saves some bandwidth and avoids the dreaded RNAAPP bug. If you use Client for MS over any other protocol, you must disable the binding between TCP/IP and Client for MS networks before it will allow you to turn off NetBIOS over TCP/IP. perin@onyx.interactive.net spent a considerable amount of time developing a BOOTP add-on for Win95. If you want to use BOOTP instead of DHCP, install his add-in software. You can find it at http://www.interactive.net/~perin/ * 8.1.2. How do I set up TCP/IP through a modem? (Follow exactly to the letter, or else!) Make sure you installed Dial-up Networking from Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup. Then make sure you have the Dial-up Adapter installed in your Network setup. Then add TCP/IP. Follow the guidelines for net cards, except use these settings: * IP address: Obtain IP address automatically * WINS Resolution: Disable WINS resolution * Gateway: leave blank unless your provider gave you a Gateway address, if so put it here * DNS: Disable DNS Resolution (We insert DNS addresses later!) * Advanced: Nothing, but turn off "Use this as default protocol". * Bindings: Definitely turn off the FPS for MS networks binding if you have it. Then re-boot, double-click on your Dial-up Networking folder and make a new connection. The modem configuration may be whatever you like, but your Server type must have these settings: * Server type: PPP (Win95, Win NT 3.5, Internet) (You can do SLIP too, contrary to popular belief) * Log on to network: OFF (This prevents disconnects if you're logged into a NetWare network) * Enable Software Compression: OFF (Unless you're dialing into an NT dial up server, in which case this will really speed things up!) * Require Encrypted password: OFF (Again, only useful if you're dialing into an NT dial up server) * Protocols supported: Only have TCP/IP turned on and the others OFF! Then in TCP/IP Settings: * Server assigned IP address: turned on unless your provider handed you one, in which case feed it here. It will automatically use Subnet mask 255.255.255.0. * Specify Name server addresses: Here's where you feed the DNS server addresses! Leave the WINS server addresses at 0.0.0.0 to disable WINS over the dial-up connection. * IP header compression: Turn ON unless your provider tells you not to. * Use Default Gateway: Turn ON unless your provider gave you a specific gateway address, and you put in your TCP/IP properties back in Network Setup. * Finally hit OK. The above settings work with 99% of all UNIX and NT dial up servers known to me. By hard-coding the DNS addresses here and specifying only TCP/IP, you prevent Win95 from sending unusual PPP requests to the dial up server, some of which can CRASH some UNIX dial-up servers. The Internet Setup Wizard automatically prepares a dial-up connection with all the proper switches set, except it turns on "Enable Software Compression", which you can turn off if you have troubles connecting. The next thing to turn off would be "Enable IP header compression" if you still have troubles connecting. If your provider requires a special login procedure, bring up properties for the dial up connection again, select "Configure...", and in the Options tab, turn on "Bring up terminal window after dialing". This will let you manually login to the dial up server. When you connect, log in manually, and activate PPP, however you're supposed to do it, then hit "Continue" or press F7, which continues the PPP negotiation. Learn your provider's login procedure, then read on to learn how to write an automated dial up script. * 8.1.2.1. Should I get the ISDN DUN 1.3 update if I don't have ISDN? Dial-up Networking 1.3 fixes a few problems in the original DUN, but I haven't run into enough of them to suggest that everyone should upgrade. Microsoft makes DUN 1.3 available at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/contents/Communication s/dun13win95/default.asp You should get DUN 1.3 if: * You use Point to Point Tunnelling Protocol (PPTP) at all * You need to connect to multiple TCP/IP networks at the same time (such as two ISPs, or an ISP and a local LAN where the LAN has a router or two) * You need to get all the TCP/IP bugfixes with minimal fuss * You want to run a dial-up server and don't have MS Plus * 8.1.2.2. Can I use two modems at the same time to speed up my connection? Depending on your ISP's policies for such things, yes you can. Get the DUN 1.3 update to install Multilink capability. To enable Multilink in DUN 1.3: * Bring up your dial-up connection's properties (right-click on the connection icon, hit "properties") * Select the Multilink tab * Hit Add to add modems and phone numbers to the list. NOTE: Your ISP may have policies against multiple connections. Phone lines are not cheap. Also note that you may be billed at twice your normal connection rate. * 8.1.2.3. How come TCP/IP routing past my router doesn't work if I have a net card AND dial-up? This is actually a classic bug in Microsoft's implementation of TCP/IP that existed since MS introduced PPP into NT Workstation 3.5. What happens is, you have one gateway (Your LAN's router) and you have a "Hop count" of 1 to the rest of your inter-network. When you establish a dial-up connection, the dial-up connection's gateway (the dial-up server) has a hop count of 1 and your LAN's gateway will have a hop count of 2, so when your machine needs to access a machine past your local subnet it'll try to reach it through the dial-up gateway instead of your LAN's gateway. (phew! How's that for an explanation?) This, of course, won't work. You can actually view this with: ROUTE PRINT from a DOS session. Try it before and after you dial up. You have three fixes you can try: 1. Don't use TCP/IP on your LAN connection. Use NetBEUI or IPX instead, and disable bindings between TCP/IP and your net card (by deleting that particular entry in the Network control panel). 2. Install the Winsock 2 update or the Dial-up Networking 1.3 update (DUN 1.3 includes Winsock 2). Winsock 2 allows for name lookups and sessions over more than one TCP/IP connection. 3. Edit the routing table after you establish the connection. Say, for example, your machine lives in a subnet of 192.1.1.0 and you need to access a machine in the 192.1.2.0 subnet while you're simultaneously connected to the Internet via a dial-up. Type this at a DOS prompt: route -f add 192.1.2.0 MASK 255.255.255.0 192.1.1.1 This example describes the target subnet (192.1.2.0), the subnet mask of the target subnet (255.255.255.0), and the router with which to access that subnet (192.1.1.1). Thanks to Mike Ziemann for actually getting this to work. Please send me corrections if this is wrong! NOTE: Win95 doesn't save routing tables between reboots. You'll need to execute this after you establish a dial-up TCP/IP connection. * 8.1.3. How can I share one dial-up connection over my network? We all heard of Wingate and how you could use an NT workstation as a dial-up router, but Wingate takes a LOT of TCP/IP knowledge, and NTWS routing requires some co-operation from your ISP, both of which are scarce. I suggest I-Way One, because it only requires ONE computer (albeit a Windows NT Workstation) running TCP/IP, and only one dial-up account. I-Way One replaces WINSOCK.DLL and WSOCK32.DLL and routes requests to these libraries to the one NT machine connected to The Internet, via NetBIOS or IPX. UPDATE 11 DEC 96: I-Way One isn't available from Workgroup Communications anymore, but I have copies. I've asked for permission from IXCHANGE (http://www.ixchange.com) to keep a copy on my server if it's legal I'll do so. This software is just far too useful to lose! In the meantime you can obtain it from ixchange.com. The only catch to using I-Way One vs Wingate is you end up replacing Win95 system components (The Winsock libraries) and it can't co-exist with any TCP/IP protocol on the client. It includes a library switcher which watchdogs the system and swaps these libraries as needed, but it makes more sense just to use I-Way One and no other version of Winsock on the machines. So, the quick instructions on using it: first set up one NTWS and make sure you can connect to your ISP using its included RAS software. Then, install the I-Way One server on it and the clients on the stations. The NTWS will dial out whenever a client needs any Winsock access, and hang up after some moment of inactivity. You don't need anything else special on the NTWS or on the clients. Another TCP/IP proxy exists from Technocratix. I have yet to try it, but you can help yourself to it at http://www.technocratix.com/webetc/ Still another TCP/IP proxy to try is Microsoft's own Proxy Server, or the "re-released" Routing and Remote Access Service (previously code-named "Steelhead"). This allows an NT server to perform dial-on-demand routing. ------------------------------ Subject: 8.2. How come I have to disconnect from my NetWare server when just dialing to The Internet? The worst complication that rises over Win95 dial-up networking, is when you try to dial out to The Internet while logged into a NetWare network, it will warn you that it must disconnect from the NetWare server, since the Client for NetWare can only log in to one NetWare server at a time. To avoid this, have "Log on to network" turned off in your dial up connection's Server Type. Rich Graves claims this is because of Microsoft's PPP "Extensions", but I think it's just because Client for NetWare can't log in to more than one server. LOGIN and ATTACH are two different actions; you can ATTACH to a NetWare server remotely after you logged in to a LAN NetWare server. Client for MS networks does not have this limitation. Client32 Warning: Many people wrote me to share their grief of trying to get Client32 computers to dial-up to the Internet without having to disconnect from their NetWare servers. While turning off "Log on to network" in Server Type works great with Client for NetWare and Services for NDS, it doesn't work with Client32! I'm sure Novell is hard at work (NOT) on this problem... ------------------------------ Subject: 8.3. How do I run my Winsock program? Make your connection, however you do it, then run your apps. Simple. Win95's WINSOCK.DLL and WSOCK32.DLL include a "standard" Windows Sockets API that works with ANY properly written Winsock program. All of the Public Domain, Freeware, Shareware, and a surprisingly large number of Commercial apps, run with these libraries. If you installed Internet Explorer, you'll find that your dial-up connection requester will pop up when you run a Winsock app, if you aren't already connected. This is pretty nifty, and you can control this auto-dialer from the new Internet control panel that shows up. Of course, Auto-dial is pretty useless if you use TCP/IP over a network card. Be VERY VERY CAREFUL if you install any one-shot packages which include their own dialers. These will often replace the OS standard WINSOCK.DLL with their own to accommodate their dialer. When you shop for such programs, make sure they have an option to use any existing TCP/IP and dialer you already installed. One such evil program is Netscape Navigator Personal Edition. Make sure you tell this program to "Use existing Winsock and dialer". A really good tip, regardless of whose TCP/IP stack you use, is to write-protect WINSOCK.DLL and WSOCK32.DLL. Bring up a DOS prompt, type CD \ DIR WINSOCK.DLL /S and note what directory the file is in. You'll probably find multiple WINSOCK.DLL files if you installed any "All in one" apps. Change to that directory then type ATTRIB +R WINSOCK.DLL Do this for WSOCK32.DLL as well. ------------------------------ Subject: 8.4. Using Trumpet (TM) and other TCP/IP stacks (Just don't!) Yes they do work, as long as you don't have any Win95 networking components installed. Problem is, when you make a networking change, Setup might decide to re-copy the files over, and when it does it will happily over-write WINSOCK.DLL. Remember: Winsock was designed for other protocols too, not just TCP/IP, and it's a standard OS component now! So, either use Win95's networking and Win95's dialer, or use no Win95 networking and someone else's dialer. And yes, you can make 32-bit Winsock apps work with older stacks. There's a WSOCK32 "thunk" available that works with an existing Win 3.1 dialer and their own WINSOCK.DLL. It's somewhere on www.windows95.com but I forgot where. You could also check out Trumpet's own 32-bit TCPMAN or TGV's replacement TCP/IP stack. * 8.4.1. Netscape 32 Personal Edition's Setup Wizard screws up TCP/IP If you install Netscape Personal Edition for Windows 95 (whatever version) it presents you with a connection setup wizard similar to Microsoft's Internet Setup Wizard. DON'T USE IT. Known problems: * It will gladly install a second instance of TCP/IP without checking first * It skips components of Win95 dial-up networking * It goofs up your TAPI location properties, so that whenever you try to connect, Win95 presents you with "There was an error in your configuration. It has been fixed." without actually FIXING IT. You can only correct this goofup by removing and re-installing Dial-up Networking, and any instances of TCP/IP from Network Properties. You will also need to make sure you configure your modem and location properties in the Modems control panel. See the steps in section 8.1.2 above. * 8.4.2. Obtaining Winsock 2.0 for Win95 To allow for multiple TCP/IP connections or to support Winsock 2 apps, MS released Winsock 2.0 for Win95 at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/contents/Updates/W95So ckets2/default.asp. This update resolves a few nasty bugs (mostly revolving around Denial of Service attacks). This works with any net card or release of Dial-up Networking before DUN 1.3; DUN 1.3 includes Winsock 2. ------------------------------ Subject: 8.5. How do I get dial-up networking to work with other stuff besides The Internet? The one really cool feature that allowed Win95 to devastate OS/2 Warp Connect; general dial-up networking. MS included a Shiva-written PPP/RAS dial-up stack that works with pretty much any transport protocol, though there's only direct support for NetBEUI, IPX, and TCP/IP. Clients can bind to these protocols to work over a dial-up connection provided they support NDIS 3.1 PnP (So it can unload when you disconnect, for example). Install Dial-up Networking in Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup. Then re-boot. A Dial-up Networking folder appears in "My Computer". You will also find a Dial-up Adapter in your Network control panel; you will have to add protocols for this adapter as needed. If you're connecting to a Win95, Windows NT, or WFWG dial-up server, you can make a connection right from the "Make new connection" wizard. This will also work if you're connecting to a NetWare network through a Win95 or Windows NT dial-up server. If you log into an NT domain this way, you need "Log on to network" turned on, otherwise you can leave it turned off to save some time. Old WFWG or NT 3.1 dial-up servers only work with the RAS server type; NT 3.5 and Win95 servers work with the PPP server type. If you're connecting to a NetWare network using NetWare Connect (NRN), Install IPX/SPX Protocol, bring up properties for your connection, and change the Server Type to NRN: NetWare Connect. This disables all other protocols but IPX over that connection. You will need "Log on to network" turned on; this will have Win95 search for a NetWare server (Or the preferred server) and bring up the NetWare log in requester. NOTE: You can also use PPP to connect to a NetWare server remotely, if your NetWare network has a Windows NT or Win95 dial-up server running. This is a less expensive option than Novell's NetWare Connect software. * 8.5.1. How do I connect two Win95 computers together with dial-up networking? You can start by reading the beginning of FAQ page 7. This covers setting up two Win95 machines so they talk to each other. The only real difference is you use the Dial-up Adapter instead of a regular net card to connect the machines together with. To add the dial-up adapter, run Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup, double-click on Communications, and turn on Dial-up Networking. Next, install MS Plus or DUN 1.3 on the machine that will answer the phone, and include Dial-up Server in the list of components. In FPS for MS networks properties, set this machine's Browse Master setting to "Enabled" instead of "Automatic". Once you finish this, turn on the dial-up server in Dial-up networking options. Specify a password if you want. Note that, if you use other Win95 apps to send faxes or to dial-out to other locations, you can leave the dial-up server turned on! Yes you can! Finally, on the machine dialing in, set its Browse Master preferences to "Disabled". Create a connection that uses only NetBEUI (This is the fastest protocol for slow links), meaning turn IPX and TCP/IP OFF in Server Type. Then try dialing the machine with the dial-up server running. Use the username and password you specified on the server. Once you connect, you should be able to browse the other machine. * 8.5.1.1. How do I connect two Win95 computers together with Direct Cable Connection? Direct Cable Connection is basically Dial-up Networking without modems. This is why you need to install DUN at the same time as DCC. DCC lets you connect two Win95 computers together with the same kind of cables you would use for LapLink or Interlink, but once connected you treat the two systems as though you connected them through DUN (Meaning you need a common client, service, and protocol). First, install DCC from Add/Remove Programs / Windows Setup. Bring up Communications details and add DCC. If you haven't already installed Dial-up Networking it will offer to do so. After it loads the needed components, and before you restart the computer, open the Network control panel and install the same components you would use to hook two Win95 machines together. These should be: * Client for MS Networks * Dial-up Adapter * NetBEUI * File & Print Sharing for MS Networks If you have other components, like TCP/IP, they should coexist nicely. Now restart the computer. Do the same thing to the other machine. Now, connect the two machines together using a Null Modem Cable (if you use a serial port) or a LapLink cable (if you use a printer port). One sample pinout for a parallel cable lives at http://oacosf.na.astro.it/rossi/hwb/ca_InterLink.html. The big advantage of parallel over serial null modem cables is you can transmit information four bits at a time instead of one, and it's supposedly four times as fast (115 200 bps * 4 = 460 800 bps, just under half the speed of Ethernet). Establish the connection by launching DCC (Start / Programs / Accessories / Drect Cable Connection) and telling each machine wether it's the host or the client. Start the host first, then the client. Once done, the client will bring up any network shares that the host has. Of course you should make some network shares on the host before connecting. You can use any devices available on the host, including printers (provided you have another printer port for the printer, that is), just like you could if these machines used a network cable. One side effect of using DCC is you will see some new "modem" devices in Device Manager (Parallel cable on LPT1 for example). If you remove these, DCC will re-create them when you launch it again. NOTE: Supposedly, you can use other protocols besides NetBEUI over DCC. While IPX games might be possible over DCC, I haven't tried, and I'm suspicious of the speed of IPX over even a parallel cable. It is also very unlikely that IPX routing would work over DCC as well. I would like feedback on DCC experiments and results. * 8.5.2. I'm using DUN to connect to a NetWare server and my IPX address keeps changing! The Dial-up Adapter generates a "fake" MAC address (a 48-bit number representing an Ethernet address) so that protocols designed for Ethernet will work on it, such as IPX. It will generate a random number for the MAC address each time you dial in. This happens REGARDLESS of what protocol you dial in with. IPX addresses look like this: NNNN-AAAAAAAA where "NNNN" is a Network Number and "AAAAAAAA" is the adapter's MAC address. Typically, a dial-up server (like NT RAS) can assign a network number for this two-station "network", but the MAC address comes from the client. It's up to the dial-up server to route to this new network number. However, programs that depend on the MAC address being fixed (such as remote backup agents) won't work. I haven't found a practical reason to use a fixed address on a dial-up line, and as such I don't have a solution. ------------------------------ Subject: 8.6. How do I set up auto-dial when I run my Winsock program? To set up auto-dial, install Microsoft Plus! or Internet Explorer. Once installed, your computer will bring up the dial-up requester when any program accesses WSOCK32.DLL. Pretty cool. For some reason this won't work with 16-bit Winsock programs though. There's a new Internet control panel when you install either of those, and you can control auto-dial and auto-disconnect from there. ------------------------------ Subject: 8.7. How do I set up auto-disconnect? As per auto-dial; install MS Plus! or Internet Explorer, and check out the Internet control panel. You then tell it to disconnect after some amount of in-activity (20 minutes by default). * 8.7.1. How do I DISABLE auto-disconnect? Auto-disconnect does have one dumb bug; unless you're performing active surfing in Internet Explorer (Other apps it just ignores), the disconnect timer will activate. This includes when you're downloading large files via FTP, and not doing any other mouse clicking. Pretty dumb. Turn it off in the new Internet control panel, that shows up when you install Internet Explorer, or MS Plus. ------------------------------ Subject: 8.8. My Internet provider only has SLIP. Can I use that? (yes.) Install DUN 1.3 or install MS Plus. The dial-up scripter includes a SLIP server type for dial-up networking. When you select SLIP: Unix Connection, or CSLIP: Unix Connection, from the server type options, you will only be able to use TCP/IP. There are additional scripting commands for using SLIP; be sure to check out dial-up scripting help for the details. You may need to use the script to obtain an IP address. 4.00.950B users have a better scripting interface which is part of the dial-up connection's properties. ------------------------------ Subject: 8.9. Why can't the dial up connection save my password? Password caching only happens if you install a Win95 network client, or enable User Profiles on a stand alone computer. By default, the Internet Setup Wizard only installs TCP/IP protocol and the dial-up networking components, which is all you really need. However, MS Exchange will do login password caching independent of the dial-up settings. In the Internet Mail properties, select "Connection" and "Login As...", then type the username and password. If you leave these blank, it will use the defaults for the dial-up connection. Other utilities like RoboDUN and DUNCE will not only save your password, but instantly dial-up without asking you for an "OK". ------------------------------ Subject: 8.10. Why does my computer hang in task "RNAAPP" when I dial out to The Internet? Before I rip into this speech, jmckone@excalibur-group says that you only have to install DUN 1.3 to fix this hanging RNAAPP bug. A Message from William Hunt (E-MAIL address unknown) says that sometimes the computer hangs with "RNAAPP (Not Responding)" when you press CTRL-ALT-DEL to bring up the task list. His fix was to hide the file named VNBT.386 which is not needed for an Internet session. Well this is correct; VNBT is a virtual device for NetBIOS over TCP/IP, not needed for connecting to The Internet and using Winsock apps. You will need this file back, however, if you run Client for MS networks over TCP/IP or otherwise want to use NetBIOS apps over it. It also appears, according to Eric Mitchell, that deleting VNBT.386 doesn't work. A better solution, which would prevent this VxD from being invoked, is to set "Disable DNS" and "Disable WINS Resolution" in TCP/IP properties, and specify the DNS address in the dial-up connection's properties directly. However, this bug seems to still creep up. One thing I've noticed is this bug never seems to happen to me. At least not anymore. So I figure I'm doing something different... here's what I do when I set up a connection on a Win95 machine in order to prevent this bug: 1. Remove any traces of non-standard comm drivers, TCP/IP stacks, etc that aren't designed for Win95 2. Remove and re-install Dial-up Networking from Add/Remove Programs / Windows Setup (to replace the related files). Add TCP/IP. 3. Remove any unneeded protocols, clients, etc, and disable any Client or Service bindings to TCP/IP not needed (such as Client for MS Networks) 4. Disable WINS resolution and set "Disable DNS". Finally, OK everything without re-starting. 5. Install Service Pack 1 and the KERNEL32 update, and any other update related to the software you use (Netscape users should get the OLE2 update as well, because I believe it uses OLE) and re-boot 6. When you make your dial-up connection, specify the name servers yourself, and turn off all server type options EXCEPT TCP/IP. I don't know why, but doing the connection up this way seems to prevent this RNAAPP lockup. ------------------------------ Subject: 8.11. How can I track time and costs for my dial-up connection? Many providers have different costing schemes, so MS didn't bother. However, check out RAS Plus 95 which monitors dial-up connection times, and lets you define your billing scheme. There are much simpler programs for free from TUCOWS. ------------------------------ Subject: 8.12. How can I get dial-up networking to work with a null modem cable? MS didn't include a null modem driver for the Telephony Interface (TAPI). However, check out this bogus MODEM.INF file, which serves the purpose. One installed, you can treat the null modem like any other modem in Win95. NOTE: Windows 98 and NT 4.0 include descriptors for null modem cables already. ------------------------------ Subject: 8.13. How do I write a dial-up script? Download DUN 1.3 from Microsoft's Win95 site, or grab it off your CD-ROM in ADMIN\APPTOOLS\DSCRIPT, and install it from Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup/Have Disk. Or install Microsoft Plus! This adds a Dial-up scripting tool to your Accessories group. If you re-install Win95, you will have to re-install this tool; Setup will over-write the Registry keys that hook DSCRPT into dial-up networking. 4.00.950B users already have far better scripting options, and older versions can take advantage of them with the Dial-up networking update. NOTE: This will also add SLIP and CSLIP to the list of dial up server choices! However, you can only use TCP/IP over SLIP and no other protocol. Run the tool to list all of your dial up connections. Select your connection, then type a path/filename to a script. The script doesn't have to exist yet. Then hit "Edit", and you'll see Notepad. It'll ask you if you want to create a new file; do so. Here's a sample script: proc main waitfor "Username:" transmit $USERID transmit "" waitfor "Password:" transmit $PASSWORD transmit "" delay 1 transmit "ppp default" delay 1 endproc The $USERID and $PASSWORD come from whatever you fed the dial-up connection. I feed "ppp default" to the provider because a successful log in only gives me a Unix prompt. "ppp default" runs a program at the dial-up server which starts a PPP session, but it isn't necessary for all dial-up servers. I even know of one public dial-up server in Taiwan that doesn't even ask for a username and password! This is why you should perform one manual login ("Bring up terminal window after dialing") and learn how your provider prompts you for this info, and then write the script based on that. Microsoft Plus and DUN 1.3 include an improved scripter which allows some branching and IF/THEN programming, but it isn't necessary for all providers. The above example works with both Plus! scripting and the basic scripter on MS's web site. And finally, save this script and hit "Apply" to attach the script to the dial-up connection. You can turn on "Step through script" to test and debug the script, then turn it off when you know it works. Hit "Apply" to save any changes you make to a script attachment or settings. * 8.13.1. How can I issue a "modem break" in a dial-up script? Some terminal servers require that you switch the server's pass through options (so 8-bit ASCII codes don't get mistaken for terminal control codes, for example.) Users of SLiRP will need to do this depending on how their dial-up server works. Here's a piece of script that Jeff Lawson uses to issue the break, then set his local options and then resume. I gather he'd then run SLiRP on the remote terminal and then continue SLIP processing in Win95. waitfor "jzl>" transmit "+++" waitfor "0" transmit "AT\\B0O0^M^M" (This part actually issues the break with AT\B0) waitfor "Local>" transmit "set session passall^M" waitfor "Local>" transmit "resume^M^M" waitfor "jzl>" (Resume normal processing, such as run SLiRP) ------------------------------ Subject: 8.14. How do I set up a dial-up server? Install MS Plus or DUN 1.3. It will add a new Dial-up server... menu to the Dial-up networking window. The Win95 dial-up server is really a NetBIOS router, meaning it doesn't actually perform WAN routing of a low level protocol (though they did hack IPX routing in there for NetWare clients). In Dial-up Networking, you have a new menu: Connections/Dial-Up Server. You can choose ONE modem to receive calls on (Not more than one, sorry), and you can pick what kind of dial up server it is (either PPP, WFWG RAS, or Default, which allows for both). You can also enter a dial up password, or pick users from a user list if you have User Level security enabled. It does appear that you CAN select more than one modem to let the Dial-up Server answer, but when it answers one it refuses to answer on the other. This is the limit of Win95's dial-up server capabilities. Now I wrote above that it's a NetBIOS router. That means it's designed to route MS Network style traffic to a network. Normally, a dial-up client will have Client for MS networks and NetBEUI installed (or for WFWG clients, they just use the Remote Access software included), because NetBEUI's the fastest NetBIOS compatible protocol for slow links. NetBEUI isn't route-able, but that doesn't matter; the network itself could use IPX or TCP/IP instead, as long as it's an MS Windows style network. * 8.14.1. ...for NetWare dial-in? NetWare dial-in works too, because Microsoft hacked a simple IPX router in there. To do NetWare dial-up access, make sure you install IPX protocol and bind it to the Dial-up Adapter in Network Control Panel. The clients can be Win95 or Windows NT clients, but they need to have IPX protocol and Client for NetWare installed. When the user dials in, a NetWare login prompt will come up, login scripts will execute, and connections will appear. WARNING: IPX over PPP is quite slow! Some tips for the client, to speed up performance: * Allow only IPX protocol for dial-out to the dial-up server (turn NetBEUI and TCP/IP OFF in Server Type) * Keep local copies of MAP.EXE and CAPTURE.EXE on the remote computer, in the WINDOWS\COMMAND directory * Turn Software Compression ON * Pick a frame type in IPX properties (Don't use Auto-Detect) * Don't run NetBIOS apps over the dial-up connection through IPX * 8.14.2. Top five reasons to use a Win95 machine as a dial-up server 5. Cheap NetWare dial-in access (A LOT cheaper than NetWare Connect!) 4. Cheap Windows Network dial-in access 3. Effortless (almost) connection to your network from home 2. Works with non-Win95 MS Network clients (like an Amiga using SAMBA!) 1. User-Level security works here (Not like NT RAS Server) * 8.14.3. Top ten misconceptions about Win95 dial-up servers 10. Fast connection speeds (NOT!) 9. It routes TCP/IP (This is a Resource Kit error.) 8. It does MS-Mail Remote (Sorry, it doesn't) 7. It routes NetBEUI (It's a NetBIOS router; NetBEUI isn't route-able) 6. You need NetBEUI on the net card to route (It's a NetBIOS router; it doesn't matter) 5. You need NetBEUI on the Dial-up Adapter to use it (It's faster, but it doesn't matter) 4. It won't work with non-Win95 dial-up clients (Bull... I've used my Amiga to dial in! Couldn't transfer any files though...) 3. It doesn't work with null modem cables (check out this bogus modem.inf file if you want to use a null modem) 2. It's a security risk to my network! (Geez, you can disable the dial-up server in system policies for the default computer, then enable it for the computers you want it to work on.) 1. It doesn't work. (I think this was a vicious rumor spread by some OS/2 advocates.) ------------------------------ Subject: 8.15. Top ten Internet/dial-up mistakes 10. Using a Win 3.1 TCP/IP protocol 9. Installing Netscape Navigator Personal Edition and using its dialer instead of Win95's 8. Buying lots of Winsock software before checking out www.windows95.com 7. Using default dial-up connection settings and crashing your provider's server 6. Installing the Dial-up Networking update for no particular reason 5. Buying Microsoft Plus! JUST for dial up scripting, before trying DUN 1.3 4. Installing a provider's setup disk for Win 3.1 (dumb mistake; many providers do that!) 3. Leaving "File & Print Sharing for MS networks" turned on over TCP/IP 2. Not getting connection and server information from your provider 1. Not reading the Modem section of this FAQ page Subject: 9. Maintaining a clean installation of Windows 95, and annoyances (Details at the Win95 Annoyances FAQ) * 9.1. How do I remove (this desktop item)... + 9.1.1. ...Inbox? + 9.1.2. ...Network Neighborhood? + 9.1.3. ...My Computer? o 9.1.3.1. How do I rename My Computer? + 9.1.4. ...Recycle Bin? o 9.1.4.1. How do I rename the Recycle Bin? + 9.1.5. ...The Microsoft Network (tm) ? * 9.2. How do I remove (this annoying startup program)... + 9.2.1. ...programs in the StartUp group in the Start Menu? + 9.2.2. ...programs that don't seem to be in the StartUp group? + 9.2.3. ...programs that aren't even listed in WIN.INI or The Registry! * 9.3. How do I remove Start Menu entries? + 9.3.1. ...on computers using User Profiles on networks? (They keep coming back!) * 9.4. How do I de-activate that dumb "Documents" menu? * 9.5. How do I completely remove... + 9.5.1. ...Windows 95 components? + 9.5.2. ...programs "Designed for Windows 95"? + 9.5.3. ...drivers for unused hardware and printers? + 9.5.4. ...Internet Explorer (tm) ? + 9.5.5. ...The Microsoft Network? + 9.5.6. ...dumb Windows 3.x programs? (How to use third party un-installers) + 9.5.7. ...old DOS and Windows 3.x files? + 9.5.8. ...Windows 95? * 9.6. How do I stop the constant hard drive access? + 9.6.1. Why should I let Win95 manage virtual memory? + 9.6.2. More on memory and disk cache tuning * 9.7. Does RAM compression really work? (no.) * 9.8. How do I stop the constant floppy drive access? * 9.9. How do I stop the constant CD-ROM access when there's no disk in the drive? * 9.10. How do I set up user profiles so I can keep my own desktop clean? + 9.10.1. Why user profiles is a really cool and useful feature, even for stand alone computers! * 9.11. What are .gid files? Are they safe to remove? * 9.12. What are "mscreate.dir" files? Are they safe to remove? * 9.13. Can I remove the "failsafe.drv" directory? * 9.14. Can I remove the "~mssetup.qt" directory" * 9.15. Top ten mis-conceptions about removing annoying items + 9.15.1. How to back up your Registry before you goof it up OK, so you don't want the Net Neighborhood cluttering your desktop because you only have an Internet connection, or your Win95 takes up too much hard drive space, or whatever. Maybe your system runs too slow and you want to speed it up. Maybe you heard about some cool utility that'll speed up your computer. Read about it here. More important, read the Win95 Annoyances FAQ for more details, if you think I'm missing something. This is where most of this info came from. BE WARNED: I do not recommend Registry hacking via REGEDIT to clean up your system! All my tips here demonstrate methods without using REGEDIT; rather they use Policy Editor. POLEDIT works with stand alone computers to directly edit the Registry, as well as creating policy files. Current versions of TweakUI (http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/info/powertoys.htm) also do the job of removing annoying items without too much damage. ------------------------------ Subject: 9.1. How do I remove this desktop item... * 9.1.1. ...Inbox? If you don't have MS Exchange installed, you can remove this icon by just right-clicking it and selecting "Delete". If you don't use it but it's in your computer, run Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup, and de-select all the MS Exchange and MS Fax components. The next time you re-start the Inbox icon will not be there. If you want to keep Exchange but still remove the Inbox, you'll have to resort to a registry hack or TweakUI. * 9.1.2. ...Network Neighborhood? If all you use is Internet access and don't use any other Win95 networking, you can run Network Control Panel, and remove all network components but the Dial-up Adapter and TCP/IP. This will remove the Net Neighborhood and all other Win95 clients from your system. NOTE: This will also disable password caching! If you use Win95 clients as well, you can hide it with Policy Editor in Default User/Shell/Hide Network Neighborhood, or with TweakUI. You can also hide individual components of Net Hood. NetWare NDS networks have additional Net Hood restrictions you can enforce as well. * 9.1.3. ...My Computer? You can't hide the icon itself, because it still points to Control Panel, Printers, and Dial-up networking. You can hide the drives themselves, however, from Policy Editor; Default User/Shell/Hide drives in My Computer. According to Annoyances, you can also make up a "blank" icon (using any freeware icon editor) and use MS Plus to change the icon to it. Also, rename the "My Computer" to a single space. The icon's still there, but no one will see it. You might also want to drag this invisible icon to an inconspicuous place on your desktop. The Zero Administration Kit (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/zak/)also contains tools to hide My Computer and a host of other icons. * 9.1.3.1. How do I rename My Computer? Right-click on it and hit "Rename". * 9.1.4. ...Recycle Bin? This requires a Registry Hack. The Zero Administration kit also does this. * 9.1.4.1. How do I rename the Recycle Bin? This also requires a Registry Hack but Norton Utilities for Win95 allows you to rename it. Other Recycle Bin hacks (such as Desktop Toilet) do the job as well. * 9.1.5. ...The Microsoft Network (TM) icon? I would just say Don't Use MSN, but you can right-click on the icon and delete it; it's just it will re-appear whenever you log in to MSN. If you choose not to use MSN (Good for you!) you can remove it from Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup. The MSN icon won't go away until the next reboot, but it will go away. TweakUI will let you remove it too. ------------------------------ Subject: 9.2. How do I remove... * 9.2.1. ...programs in the startup group in the Start Menu? The Start Menu (And desktop as well) are just directories with shortcuts inside. You can right-click on the Start Menu and hit Open, then find the startup folder and delete the shortcuts in it. You can also right-click on the Taskbar, get Properties, and in Start Menu Items tab, hit "Remove". * 9.2.2. ...programs that don't seem to be in the startup group? Some Win 3.1 thinking programmers (like at ATI) put their programs in WIN.INI's load= line in the [boot] section. Don't they trust themselves with the Registry yet? You can run SYSEDIT.EXE and delete the offending load= line from WIN.INI. Programs that insert themselves in the Registry, using the CurrentVersion\Run key, run before WIN.INI gets touched. You can remove these using Policy Editor; Default Computer/System/Run. Interesting note: "Run Services" shows programs that run even before you get a log in prompt. Some anti-virus software may insert themselves here (Some viruses could insert themselves here too!) * 9.2.3. ...programs that aren't even listed in WIN.INI or The Registry! (IE: Norton Anti-Virus) Programs can actually start in one of a few places. Check all of these: * The Startup group in the Start Menu (Right-click on the Start button and hit Open or Explore) * WIN.INI (Start / Run / SYSEDIT.EXE, look in WIN.INI for load= or run= lines) * System Agent (If you have MS Plus you can cause programs to start on bootup regardless of user profiles) * The Registry part 1 (HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run or RunServices) * The Registry part 2 (HKCU\ Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run / this one can vary for each user if you have User Profiles) You can access the Registry parts using POLEDIT as well as REGEDIT. If it's not in one of these you can always run that program's uninstaller (provided they included one). ------------------------------ Subject: 9.3. How do I remove Start Menu entries? Right-click on the Taskbar and get Properties, get Start Menu Programs, and hit "Remove". Then pick and choose. You can also right-click on the Start button and hit Open. Then pick and choose the shortcuts you want to delete. * 9.3.1. ...on computers using User Profiles on networks? (They keep coming back!) Yes I know. Win95's supposed to update the network copy of the shortcuts on log-out, but sometimes they just keep coming back. Delete them from your Home directory or MAIL directory as well to keep them from coming back. ------------------------------ Subject: 9.4. How do I de-activate that dumb "Documents" menu? Normally you can right-click on the Taskbar, hit "Start Menu Programs", and hit "Clear Documents Menu" to clear it. But it will just fill up as you work with Win95. MS has a Power Toy that clears this folder on exit. TweakUI 1.1 includes this feature. Try that before you try any of the hacks below. There's a Registry Hack that relocates the Documents menu (the RECENT folder) to the Recycle Bin, and if you have "Remove immediately" turned on it will keep that menu clean, but there IS a safer way. In AUTOEXEC.BAT include this line: DEL %WINDIR%\RECENT\*.* An even more effective way to keep the documents menu clean, and still enjoy its functionality during a single Win95 session, is to insert a command into System Agent, if you have MS Plus! installed. Write a batch file with the above command in it, then add it into System Agent. Schedule it to run "On Startup". This method won't work if you use User Profiles, but there's a work-around for that if you used WINSET to copy the %USERNAME% variable. Use this style of batch file instead: DEL %WINDIR%\PROFILES\%USERNAME%\RECENT\*.* NOTE: DOS programs run from System Agent should have "Background: Always Suspend" turned OFF! Also, instead of inserting the program itself into System Agent, insert its PIF file instead. Additional NOTE: You can run PIF files from the Registry, from load= in WIN.INI, or in the startup group as well, in case you don't have System Agent. ------------------------------ Subject: 9.5. How do I completely remove... * 9.5.1. ...Windows 95 components? All the OS components are in Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup. You can add and remove them from there, and Win95 deletes the required files from your hard disk as well. Other additional components you add in this requester (like dial-up scripting) are removable from the main Install/Uninstall tab. * 9.5.2. ...programs "Designed for Windows 95"? All programs Designed for Win95 have an uninstaller you can access from Add/Remove Programs/Install/Uninstall. If not, complain to the publisher of the program. If that doesn't work, complain to Microsoft, who awarded the logo to them. A program's uninstaller will remove its components and Registry entries, if properly written. If the program included extra subsystems, such as DirectX or QuickTime, their uninstaller will usually leave them for other programs to use. These extra subsystems should also have their own uninstaller. * 9.5.3. ...drivers for unused hardware and printers? Printers are rather conveniently removed; if Explorer realizes you removed a printer and no other printer uses its drivers, it will offer to delete the offending files. Other hardware drivers will remain, however. So, if you want to remove files used by a given piece of hardware, run Device Manager and bring up that device's properties. Bring up the "Driver" tab, copy this list where the driver files are, and delete them after you remove that device. You have to look BEFORE you remove the device, and not AFTER, or the list disappears with the device entry. * 9.5.4. ...Internet Explorer (TM) ? If you use MS-Plus you need to remove Internet Explorer from Plus' uninstaller. IEXPLORE 2.0 will have its own uninstaller, but the uninstaller will keep the Internet Setup Wizard and its control panel entry in tact. You can always re-run the setup wizard even if you installed a different browser to replace IEXPLORE. It also keeps the Internet Mail client for MS-Exchange installed, which won't disappear unless you remove Exchange. NOTE: According to Win95 Annoyances, IEXPLORE will keep many pieces of itself in the system after you uninstall it this way. IEXPLORE 2.0 does a better job of uninstalling itself, but it still keeps the Setup Wizard, mail client for Exchange, and auto-dialer in tact. You should keep these really, but you can delete the "Program Files/Plus!/Microsoft Internet" folder afterwards. To keep the file type registrations in tact, you should re-install your browser of choice after you uninstall Internet Explorer. IEXPLORE's uninstaller will destroy any changes you made to .HTM and .HTML file type entries. * 9.5.5. ...The Microsoft Network? Remove the BillNet icon from the Desktop, then remove BillNet from Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup,. This will remove the main MSN control program and the Exchange mail client, but it will install a "Set up the Microsoft Network" installer in its place. You can simply delete the Program Files/The Microsoft Network folder completely afterwards, even though it says "This will impact one or more registered programs." Big deal. Win95 Annoyances says the BillNet icon's Delete option goes away after you remove it from Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup. I found, however, that the icon will go away by itself after you re-start. There's always TweakUI as well. * 9.5.6. ...dumb Windows 3.x programs? (How to use third party uninstallers) Get a decent Designed for Win95 uninstaller if you want the flexibility of removing Win 3.1 apps cleanly. The only uninstaller which actually works (that I saw, anyway) is CleanSweep 95 from Quarterdeck, but it only works if you install the Win 3.1 program AFTER you install CleanSweep. To use CleanSweep, just try running any program called "SETUP" or "INSTALL" or any number of variants. The CleanSweep monitor kicks in and asks you if you want to monitor the installation. On occasion, a Setup program might not like this (and crash the install monitor), in which case you can manually start logging (by clicking on the Install Monitor in the Taskbar) before running the setup program, and manually stop it. Also available now is Remove-IT 95 by Vertisoft. This program does a great job of completely nuking The Microsoft Network, including all Registry entries. My Boss, Jim Farewell, firmly believes you should use a "Professional Uninstaller" to monitor all app installations, including Designed for Win95 ones. OK, have it your way. Just be prepared. * 9.5.7. ...old DOS and Windows 3.x files? Win95 Setup will maintain your old DOS and Windows, if you chose to install on top of your existing Windows setup. Later on, you can remove the old DOS and Windows files from Add/Remove Programs/Install/uninstall. If you installed Win95 in a different directory, you can also simply delete the old DOS and Windows folders in Explorer. Win95 Setup would've included your old DOS directory in your path, however, so maybe leave that one alone until you decide you don't need the old DOS utilities anymore. * 9.5.8. ...Windows 95? You can also uninstall Win95 from Add/Remove Programs/Install/uninstall, if you installed on top of your existing Windows. If you installed in a different directory, however... 1. Re-boot the computer with your old DOS disk 2. From the DOS prompt, type SYS C: (This restores the original DOS system files) 3. Rename CONFIG.DOS to CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.DOS to AUTOEXEC.BAT 4. Re-boot off the hard drive Then you can remove your Win95 directory, PROGRA~1 directory, and any hidden or system files you don't recognize. The easiest way to do this is run Win 3.1 File Manager, and have "Show Hidden/System Files" turned on in View/File Types". ------------------------------ Subject: 9.6. How do I stop the constant hard drive access? Win95 is always swapping between its RAM and the hard drive's swap file, especially on 8 MB systems or systems with several programs running at once. To ease the swapping: 1. Edit SYSTEM.INI; add this to the [vcache] section: [vcache] maxfilecache=1024 (on 16 MB systems, or 512 on 8 MB systems) 2. Right click on My Computer, hit Properties, hit "Performance", and go through these settings: * File system/hard disk: read ahead size: 16 KB (Any smaller will make Win95 unstable) * File System/CD-ROM caching: reduce to around 250 KB, no less, and pick the "right" type of read-ahead access for your speed of CD-ROM (Making a double-speed drive use a quad-speed read-ahead doesn't always work!) * Virtual memory: Let Windows manage VM; it keeps the swap file as %WINDIR%\WIN386.SWP which you can erase in AUTOEXEC.BAT. Remove any swap file-related entries in SYSTEM.INI also. You will find these settings give the quietest hard drives, even with disk compression used! NOTE: Norton Navigator will cause additional disk swapping, because it maintains more shortcuts in the Start Menu which will verify that their targets exist. * 9.6.1. Why should I let Win95 manage virtual memory? If you let Win95 manage virtual memory, it will try to grow/shrink the swap file as required. On systems with low disk space this is actually a GOOD thing, because it doesn't instantly eat hard drive space. On systems with large hard drives this will become an annoyance, and the swap file will fragment, slowing down swapping. Others (many others) suggest letting the swap file grow is a GOOD thing on big systems, because large programs can "Bottom-out" on fixed swap files. If you choose to let Win95 manage virtual memory, include this line somewhere in AUTOEXEC.BAT: DEL C:\WIN95\WIN386.SWP So when your computer re-starts Win95 will re-build the swap file unfragmented. While you're at it, you can kill the contents of the TEMP directory the same way (DELTREE /Y C:\WIN95\TEMP\*.*). * 9.6.2. More on memory and disk cache tuning Alex Nichol explained a few things to me about the "Typical role of this machine" setting in My Computer / Properties. He explains that the "Typical Role" affects two special caches; the path cache (Directory cache?) and filename cache. Since a machine designated as a "Network Server" often has several different files open at once, it has larger filename and path caches. "Notebook Computer" also sets aside larger path and filename caches so you're using less battery power accessing the filenames and directories. This setting does not affect the main file cache (VCACHE) however, nor would it affect any real mode disk caching such as SmartDrive for devices driven with DOS drivers. You can adjust VCACHE in SYSTEM.INI, and if you use SmartDrive at all you can specify two parameters for file cache size as you always could in DOS. ------------------------------ Subject: 9.7. Does RAM compression really work? (No.) Those programs were for Win 3.1 apps that ate ridiculous amounts of GDI memory (System Resources), where they fixed inadequacies in the operating system. Win95 has larger resource limits, and properly written Win32 programs won't use them... as much. Please save your money and effort, and stay away from this bogus software. If you really need to run 500 programs at once, get Windows NT Workstation. Or get an Amiga. ------------------------------ Subject: 9.8. How do I stop the constant floppy drive access? This is evidence of shortcuts and PIF files pointing to files on floppy disks. When Win95 builds its Start Menu, it checks all the shortcuts to see that they point to something intelligent. This will lead to floppy access when you view the Documents menu, for example. Whenever you run a DOS program, Win95 builds a PIF file for it. If the program ran from a removable disk (like a floppy or CD-ROM) it will store the PIF in %WINDIR%\PIF. To stop the constant floppy access from these shortcuts, right-click on the hard drive with Win95 in it and hit "Find...", then in the search space, type "*.lnk;*.pif", then hit the Advanced tab and in the "Containing Text" box, type "A:". Hit Find. That search should generate a list of shortcuts pointing to drive A, including those in your RECENT, and PIF folders. Delete them from this window. Don't delete any shortcuts in the "SendTo" folder, but you should be able to safely delete the rest. The random floppy access will stop once you do. To avoid getting this random disk access again, avoid launching documents and programs off floppy disks. Instead, open documents from the program they came from, and run DOS programs by opening a DOS prompt first, then switching to A: and running it from there. Also see how to Delete the Documents menu on startup. NOTE: Norton Navigator will cause even more floppy access, because it maintains more shortcuts at a time, especially floppy file shortcuts! ------------------------------ Subject: 9.9. How do I stop the constant CD-ROM access when there's no disk in the drive? Win95's CDFS auto-detects disks when inserted, so Explorer can properly update the drive and folder windows. It also looks for an AutoPlayer on the disk (autoplay.inf) and will launch it. Because of this continuous checking, the CD-ROM drive light will flash. If it's an IDE drive, your HD light will flash along with it. You could use real mode CD-ROM drivers and MSCDEX instead, but this leads to very pathetic performance. I would say ignore it and don't worry, because this auto-detect takes about 0% processor time. But if you insist on being annoyed by it: Bring up My Computer/Properties and select Device Manager. Bring up properties for the CD-ROM drive, and turn off "Auto-Insert Notification". This is also advisable for CD-ROM changer owners, otherwise it will scan all of your platters when you insert the cartridge. Maybe turn it on for the first platter and leave it off for the rest; CD-ROM changers show up as multiple drives, because each platter has its own SCSI LUN ID. TweakUI also lets you turn off autoplay, but it does not stop auto-insert notification, so it won't have any effect on this annoyance. ------------------------------ Subject: 9.10. How do I set up user profiles so I can keep my own desktop clean? User Profiles go a long way in keeping your computer clean, if you have several users using it. Go to Passwords Control Panel (which is always there even for non-networked machines) and in the User Profiles tab, select "Each user has their own settings". Also turn on the Custom Desktop and Custom Start Menu. * 9.10.1. Why user profiles is a really cool and useful feature, even for stand alone computers! Read all about it in Page 7 here. You can keep custom settings for every Win32 app, not just for the desktop and start menu. It's also good if you destroy your Registry by accident; at least half of it is saved. ------------------------------ Subject: 9.11. What are .gid files? Are they safe to remove? .GID files are help index files. They include word lists for the matching help file. Yes they're safe to remove, but when you access the help file next time, WINHLP32 will re-build the .GID file. Also, some Win32 programs require the .GID file be present. To re-build a deleted .GID file, open the help file from Explorer. ------------------------------ Subject: 9.12. What are "mscreate.dir" files? Are they safe to remove? These are directory index files that MS Office "Fast Find" makes when you first access a directory. You can remove these, but FastFind will re-create them when you access the folder again. To keep them from coming back, remove the Fast Find shortcuts from your Startup group. ------------------------------ Subject: 9.13. Can I remove the "failsafe.drv" directory? If you don't use disk compression you can remove this. Otherwise don't. Win95 uses the programs here to undo interrupted compression tasks. The programs in here are actually Win 3.1 programs, that run in the special DOSX environment, to do compressed drive conversions and such. ------------------------------ Subject: 9.14. Can I remove the "~mssetup.qt" directory" I don't know why MS Office 95 leaves this thing there, but yes, you can remove it. It only contains another directory called ~pp.t which is equally useless. ------------------------------ Subject: 9.15. Top ten misconceptions about annoying items 10. Microsoft blatantly put them there as ads 9. Microsoft blatantly put them there to take up disk space 8. You have to use REGEDIT to remove them 7. You need a RAM compression program to run Win95 (NOT!) 6. Letting Win95 manage virtual memory is a good thing (heh heh...) 5. Win95 removes competing programs (nonsense! I use WP 6.1 and it doesn't disappear, though Win95 Annoyances claims that programs can disappear) 4. You need third-party uninstallers for Win95 programs (Get the Win95 programs fixed!) 3. You can happily delete DLLs etc not listed in WIN.INI or SYSTEM.INI (But what about the Registry?) 2. You can delete SYSTEM.DAT (Not unless you want to re-install Win95... heh heh) 1. Win95 scans your hard drive and reports its contents to Microsoft (Big Brother is watching you... not) * 9.15.1. How to back up your Registry before you goof it up Yes, you will probably try one of the registry hacks you read about in Win95 Annoyances. Well, before you do so, boot to "Command prompt only", and do this: CD %WINDIR% ATTRIB -H -S -R *.DAT COPY SYSTEM.DAT SYSTEM.BAK COPY USER.DAT USER.BAK Then you can re-boot and happily tweak away using REGEDIT and POLEDIT. If you do screw up and you can't re-start Win95, then go back into command prompt only and re-copy SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT. SYSTEM.DAT is more critical than USER.DAT; the distinction is more important when you use User Profiles, because each user has their own USER.DAT. Subject: 10. Windows Messaging, AKA: Microsoft Exchange, AKA: Microsoft Outlook... * 10.1. Exchange basics, and why I recommend Exchange for first time E-MAIL users * 10.2. How do I send and receive... + 10.2.1. ...Internet mail? o 10.2.1.1. How do I make Exchange behave like a "normal" mail client? o 10.2.1.2. Top ten Internet Mail annoyances + 10.2.2. ...MS Mail? o 10.2.2.1. How do I view shared folders on an MS Mail server? o 10.2.2.2. Do I need to have MS Mail in my profile if I'm not using MS Mail? (no!) o 10.2.2.3. How can I set up a simple e-mail system on my small network using MS Mail? + 10.2.3. ...Comp-U-Serve (tm) mail? + 10.2.4. ...Faxes? o 10.2.4.1. How do I share fax modems between Windows 95 machines? o 10.2.4.2. How do I share fax modems between Windows 95 and WFWG machines? o 10.2.4.3. Top ten Microsoft Fax annoyances o 10.2.4.4. What about WinFax PRO (tm) for Win95? + 10.2.5. ...MHS mail? + 10.2.6. ...cc:Mail? + 10.2.7. ...Microsoft Network mail? + 10.2.8. ...Voice messages? (Microsoft Phone) * 10.3. Remote Mail basics for MS Mail, Internet Mail, CIS Mail, and Microsoft Network Mail users + 10.3.1. How can I keep mail on the server? * 10.4. How can I keep a separate inbox or address book for each user? (Exchange Profiles) * 10.5. Address Book basics + 10.5.1. How do I import or convert other databases into the Address Book? * 10.6. Top ten mis-conceptions about Exchange * 10.7. Wish List * 10.8. Exchange's other names and versions * 10.9. How to get the spelling checker to work in Exchange For the purpose of this document (especially so I don't have to re-write the whole thing!!!) I will refer to "Exchange" as either the MS Exchange E-MAIL front end that comes with Windows 95 and NT Workstation 4.0, or the Exchange Client update from Microsoft, or the Windows Messaging Client update from Microsoft. "Exchange" in this document does NOT refer to Microsoft's Exchange Server product. Visit Sue Mosher's FAQ at http://www.slipstick.com/exchange/msgfaq.htm for additional Windows Messaging information. All the way from Moscow! She has her latest updates and highlights up there at http://www.slipstick.com/exchange/. This document may help users of NT Workstation 4.0 as well, as the Windows Messaging client for NT works exactly like the Win95 version. E-MAIL me back for accuracy checks please. They may also apply to MS's Outlook product which comes with MS Office 97, but visit Sue Mosher's site for the latest dirt on Outlook. ------------------------------ Subject: 10.1 Exchange basics, and why I recommend Exchange for first time E-MAIL users The bloody thing comes with the operating system, for one, so it's free! Exchange acts as a front end for pretty much any mail client, so it lets the developers worry about mail delivery, while it worries about the interface. Basically, you start with four folders, and all your personal mail comes in your Inbox folder. Stuff you send stays in your Outbox folder until a "Delivery" happens, either when you select "Deliver now" or one of the Exchange clients (such as Internet Mail) decides it's time to deliver mail, scheduled in time intervals you can control. Within the Exchange window you can drag messages between folders, shared folders if available, or directories in Explorer. Another big reason: it's interface matches the Windows Explorer so closely. You can copy & paste messages between it and other Explorer windows. You don't need to learn a whole new interface just to use a second, or third mail system. Yet another big reason: You get all your mail in one place! Internet mail, CompuServe mail, faxes, MSN, MS-Mail, and whatever anyone else decides to make for it. All big apps that support MAPI (those with a "Send Mail..." menu in their File menus), even Win 3.1 apps, work with it. Send a Word document to your buddy at nowhere.com, without fussing with saving, running your other mail program, and attaching. Exchange also stores mail on the user's hard drive or Home directory, so the mail server need not be running to view mail. Many users and developers are just beginning to grasp what Exchange is capable of, and most of us make many, many, mistakes, and abandon it in favor of "standard" mail apps. Please don't give up; Exchange has serious potential, and many of the features you think are missing, might just be in there... maybe even improved on! ------------------------------ Subject: 10.2. How do I send and receive... * 10.2.1. ...Internet mail? Easiest way, is download Microsoft's Internet Explorer and install it, then run the Internet Setup Wizard. Feed the wizard all the info it needs; get it from your provider. Alternately, download MS's stand-alone Internet Mail Client for Exchange, if you don't want to use Internet Explorer. Then add Internet Mail to your Exchange Profile, or let the setup wizard do it. 4.00.950B and NT 4.0 some with the Internet Mail client. If you use a dial-up connection, be sure to enable Remote Mail otherwise it will dial up your provider every 15 minutes. The Internet Setup Wizard automatically turns on Remote Mail. When you write your messages, enter addresses as you would for any other Internet mail program, in the To: Box of the Send Message requester. Separate multiple addresses with semicolons (a ";") instead of commas. Hit File/Properties to change the sending options of this message if you wish; you can send attachments MIME or UUEncoded, use a different character set if you're sending messages overseas, and such. Finally hit the "Send" button. Notice, however, it does not deliver the message immediately. It will not deliver the message until you run a Remote Mail session, or you hit Tools/Deliver Now Using/Internet Mail. Automatic sending doesn't happen unless you turn off Remote Mail and have it check for mail automatically. Microsoft's Internet Mail client only works with a POP3 server and an SMTP server for outgoing mail. In Internet Mail properties, you can specify a different server for outbound mail by hitting "Advanced", and typing in the name of the outgoing mail server. I'm hoping for an IMAP4 client some time soon, but 90% of providers don't use IMAP4. Sad. There are also many more replacement Internet mail clients popping up, including from Netscape, Corel, and Delrina. * 10.2.1.1. How do I make Exchange behave like a "normal" Internet Mail client? Download Internet Idioms from Angry Greycat Designs. This adds an Idioms tab to the Exchange options requester. You can choose a default read font (I recommend Courier-New 10), a default Send Mail font (Again, Courier-New 10), you can add a signature to all your e-mail (including MS-Mail, Faxes, MSN, whatever), and you can use a "standard" reply idiom with tabbed text and little ">" all over the place. NOTE: Ben Goetter updated many of his Widgets for the Windows Messaging and Exchange Server Client updates. Be sure to grab his updates. Many of them, however, won't run with MS Outlook! Be careful! NEW Toolkit: Anthony Humphreys (anthony@istar.ca) has kindly bundled the best Exchange add-ons, including Internet Idioms, into one installable (and uninstallable) package. Get them from ftp://ftp.inforamp.net/pub/win95/exchange/widgets.zip. If your browser supports frames, visit his Exchange Centre at http://home.istar.ca/~anthony/. If you use MIME to encode messages and attachments (the default), set the character set to your appropriate choice. Most of us should set it to US-ASCII. Select Internet Mail properties, hit Message Format, hit Character Set, and select US-ASCII. This will remove equal signs and "=3D" codes in messages. If you turn off MIME, either in the properties of your message or in the Character set here, it will send attachments UUEncoded. Ben Goetter, founder of Angry Greycat Designs, also has an excellent Exchange FAQ. * 10.2.1.2. Top ten Internet Mail annoyances 10. WINMAIL.DAT attachment (attaches a "Rich text format" message; turn off "Use Rich Text Format" in Internet address book entries, or type in target addresses directly (such as "gordonf@vcn.bc.ca" rather than "[SMTP:gordonf@vcn.bc.ca]") 9. Can't insert a .signature (get Internet Idioms) 8. Funny codes show up when using MIME encoded messages (Set the charset to US-ASCII to fix) 7. It insists on deleting mail off my mail server (Use Remote Mail to transfer mail instead) 6. It keeps dialing up my ISP every 15 minutes (Tell it to work off-line and use Remote Mail instead) 5. It won't automatically send my mail (You'll have to do a Tools/Deliver Now or use Remote Mail, or tell it to check mail every so often) 4. I can't set it up for more than one user (Create multiple Exchange Profiles or User Profiles) 3. It won't do Blind Carbon-copy (Just turn on "BCC Box" in the View menu of any new message window) 2. It won't do a bulk mailing (Use your Personal Address Book and make a group up for your bulk mailing. Personally, I don't like bulk mail (SPAM) anyway!) 1. It won't take commas between multiple recipients (That's an MS-Mail throwback; use semicolons instead) * 10.2.2. ...MS Mail? Add Microsoft Mail Services, in Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup, if it isn't already in there. Then add it to your Exchange profile. It will ask you for the network path to your MS-Mail server, either full version or WFWG type server, and will let you select your name from a list of names. The Mail Administrator has to add you to the user list before you can pick from here, though. This is an important difference compared to the older WFWG mail client. MS-Mail under Exchange has all the original benefits of MS-Mail's original 3.2 program, and Exchange will let you import your old .MMF files and address book into your Personal Folders. Select File/Import. * 10.2.2.1. How do I view shared folders on an MS Mail server? Exchange's original MS-Mail client didn't support shared folders, but download Microsoft's Exchange Update, which includes an MS-Mail client update, to get them back. Install it through Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup/Have Disk. After you install it, you will need to re-boot, then remove and re-add MS-Mail to your Exchange Profile. Once you do, the MS-Mail Shared Folders will show up as a separate folder tree in your folder view window. You can then copy mail back and forth between folders on it, and your personal folders, and create new shared folders. * 10.2.2.2. Do I need to have MS Mail in my profile if I'm not using MS Mail? Absolutely not. Microsoft Mail is one of many messaging services you can keep in an Exchange Profile. In fact you could have a profile which only has Personal Folders and Personal Address Book, but then you couldn't send or receive anything. A basic profile has these two basic services and as few as one messaging service, such as Internet Mail. * 10.2.2.3. How do I set up a small e-mail system on my network using MS Mail? First, pick some central server, or a computer that's always turned on. Then in Control Panel / MS Mail Administrator, instruct the machine to create a New Workgroup Post Office. Instruct the Administrator program where you want the directory tree, or post office, to reside. If you're using all Win95 machines you can specify a UNC path (\\server\share). If it's on a NetWare or other server, just give it a regular DOS path, but try to specify a UNC path if you network client allows it. It will then build the directory tree and allow you to create an Administrator account, and other accounts. On all the machines in the network, tell MS Mail to use that UNC or DOS path to the post office. The Inbox Setup Wizard will let you pick an existing username from the list on the post office, but you can also hand-configure it through MS Mail settings. Once done, this machine can send mail to the other users on that post office. The Administrator can administer that post office from any computer that has the MS Mail client on it, through the very same control panel. Just select "Administer existing post office" and give it the Administrator mailbox name and password. * 10.2.3. ...CompuServe (TM) Mail? This is a big money saver, because it lets you manage your mail off line, but it requires you already installed the CompuServe Information Manager on your computer (The Win 3.1 or DOS version works fine). If you already haven't installed CIM, do so, and feed it your account information. First, download the CompuServe Exchange client, or look on your CD-ROM for DRIVERS\OTHER\EXCHANGE\COMPUSRV. Next, run the Setup program. That will install the CompuServe mail client and it will run the Inbox Setup Wizard for that client. Tell it where your CIM directory is (usually C:\CSERVE), tell it your access phone number including country code and area code (even if it's local; this follows TAPI spec), and access type (Direct, DATAPAC, whatever). I'm not sure why it wants to use your CIM directory though; maybe for copying its address book perhaps? When finished, and after you re-start Exchange, you can send mail to addresses in CompuServe's format (xxxxx.yyyy) or make Personal Address Book entries with CIS addresses in them. Now, to deliver CIS mail, select Tools/Deliver Now Using/CompuServe Mail. It will dial up your local CIS access number, prompt you for a password (unless you gave it your password), then deliver your mail. Regardless of whether you have mail or not, the CIS client will generate an event log and post it in your Inbox.. Remote Mail also works with CIS mail, letting you keep mail on the CIS server, etc, as will Internet Idioms. * 10.2.4. ...Faxes? Add Microsoft Fax services, from Add/Remove Programs/Windows Setup. Then add Microsoft Fax to your Exchange profile. It will ask you for your name, fax number, and other such items that would belong on a fax cover sheet. Of course, it will ask you what fax modem you want to use. You can then send faxes like any other kind of E-MAIL, including .signatures if you installed Internet Idioms. But far more useful than the regular message requester, is the "New Fax" wizard, which lets you specify a nice cover page (even let you create a new one from scratch), a nice short message, and a proper phone number with area code (following Win95's TAPI spec). And yes, you can print to a fax (or send mail to a Fax address) from any Windows app. Fax Setup adds a Win95 printer driver for faxing. No need to make cover pages in your documents though; you can use the built-in cover page editor to make new ones, or use the four built-in ones. If you want to send a message to both E-MAIL and FAX addresses, use the Fax Address Wizard to insert a Fax address while in any Send Mail requester. Select Tools/Fax Address Wizard. This will let you choose a cover page and insert a proper TAPI phone number in to the fax address. After the wizard completes you can continue to add more E-MAIL or FAX addresses. Attachments will get sent too; Exchange will launch the attachment's associated program and tell it to print to the Microsoft Fax driver. Faxes vs E-MAIL: MS Fax is one of the Exchange messaging services, so it (in many ways) treats faxes like any other kind of e-mail. If you're sending to another MS Exchange Fax recipient, it can even be a real e-mail (if you have "Editable, if possible" selected as the fax format). It does this by encoding the e-mail (and any attachments) into a fax image that the other end can interpret and decode back into an e-mail message. Only MS Fax and Delrina WinFax Pro 7.0 understand this strange format, so you're better off using "Not editable" as the fax format. However, this strange handling of faxes makes you treat "normal" faxes like "attachments" in e-mail. You can even use [FAX:xxx-yyyy] as an e-mail address. Don't be afraid to. NOTE: MS-Word for Win95 has a mail merge bug though; It will crash if you attempt a mail-merge from Word to multiple fax addresses. I don't have all the details but this was pointed out and verified in KB article Q139465. I also forgot who pointed it out to me, sorry. * 10.2.4.1. How do I share fax modems between Windows 95 machines? Set aside one computer to share the fax modem, and see to it that it runs Exchange all the time (By placing a shortcut to Inbox in its Startup group). Get Inbox Properties (Or your Exchange profile properties) and get Microsoft Fax properties. Select the Modem tab, and select, "Let me share my modem on the network". All the file sharing rules apply, including User Level security if you enabled that, and you will need a file sharing service installed on that computer. You can't cheat and use a network drive on another server this time, unlike WFWG FAX let you do; the system will use your C: drive and create a FAX share on it. Now, in the Modem tab on everyone else's fax properties, change the modem type to "Network Fax". Give it the UNC or DOS path to the shared directory on the fax server. Users can then send (but not receive... awwww) faxes through the network. Someone will still have to sit at the fax server to route and print faxes as necessary. Routing faxes is a simple matter of forwarding the fax attachment to E-MAIL addresses in the network. * 10.2.4.2. How do I share fax modems between Windows 95 and WFWG machines? Win95 fax servers won't work with WFWG clients or vise-versa. I know, sad. I vaguely remember MS releasing a patch to MS Fax to let Win95's Fax client access WFWG fax servers, but I can't find any reference to it on MS's web site anymore. * 10.2.4.3. Top ten Microsoft Fax annoyances 10. It can't do broadcast faxes (Yes it can; just feed it a bunch of fax addresses in your personal address book and BCC: them as a group. If I find I'm part of one of your lists, though, heh heh heh...) 9. It won't automatically print faxes (You like junk faxes wasting your paper?) 8. It won't dial 1-(area code) for long distance within my area code (Add that fax number to your personal address book, and turn on "Dial area code, even though it's the same as mine" and check out other TAPI dialing help in Modems and TAPI) 7. It displays a dumb window when it sends a fax (Right-click on the little Fax icon in the Taskbar, then turn off "Display when active") 6. It gives me a junk mail message from SPRINT whenever I install it (Big deal; delete it, it only happens once) 5. I can't use the modem when Exchange is running (Auto-answer won't interfere with other Win95 apps trying to use the modem; you can use HyperTerminal at the same time, for example. Check out the Modems and TAPI section.) 4. I can't print to the fax modem without changing my default printer (That's a dumb MS Office 4.x bug; just use "Send..." instead, and specify a fax address. Yes it does work.) 3. It processes faxes locally and wastes my processing time 2. It keeps trying to make E-MAIL format (Set the fax type to "Not editable" in Fax Properties/Message) 1. It's cover page editor sucks (But it's functional, isn't it?) * 10.2.4.4. What about WinFax PRO (TM) for Win95? Delrina (AKA: Symantec) getting the Designed for Win95 logo for this program is a miracle. They're already in my Logo Lamers page. Listen. Give up on WinFax and wait until they earn that Win95 logo. For about 99% of us faxing, MS Fax will do all we need to do, and it's free. * 10.2.5. ...MHS mail? Terry Harrigan at http://www.ihub.com/ now (finally) has a MHS messaging and address book service for Exchange. it's part of their Connect2 series for Windows. I haven't had the chance to properly review it because I don't have access to MHS post offices anymore, but if anyone out there can try this out and let me know how it works, I'd appreciate it. Many people, including Olaf Berli and Frank Carius tell me that Ihub's Connect2Exchange is a very good MHS client and you should consider them for additional MHS utilities. It's a fine compliment to the MHS services included with NetWare servers. Note to Terry: I still didn't appreciate you writing me a second time... I had to repost the FAQ in March because of other tech details and didn't have the chance to include your info. Please give me a chance at least. * 10.2.6. ...VIM (cc:Mail) mail? There's a cc:Mail client for Exchange at http://www.transendcorp.com/ under the title ConnectWare for cc:Mail. They have a 30 day trial version available for download and a commercial version. You also need updated VIM .DLL files, which you can get from Lotus via ConnectWare's site. From what I read about it, ConnectWare for cc:Mail is a proper Exchange client, with Remote Mail support. * 10.2.7. ...Microsoft Network mail? MSN Setup automatically adds an MSN mail client for Exchange, and you can grab user lists off MSN directly, and store local copies. If you already have BillNet software installed, you will have a "Microsoft Network Online Service" client you can add to your Exchange profile. It grabs your user info from the rest of BillNet, so there's no additional setup needed. This is pretty much the easiest client to set up. BillNet Mail lets you send to BillNet or Internet addresses, so when you create address book entries and you use both BillNet and Internet Mail, make sure you select the type of Internet Mail address you want to use. Your least expensive bet is to always use direct Internet Mail, rather than Internet Mail via BillNet, if you have a choice. * 10.2.8. Voice Messages? (Microsoft Phone) Yes it's real. Sue Mosher confirmed it for me and others have heard about it, and you can also read about it on Microsoft's web site if you do a search on it. MS Phone is a voice mail add-on for Exchange that will receive voice messages and store them as .WAV attachments in your Inbox. You can also call your voice mail box from another telephone and have MS Phone play voice messages back. And here's the real killer: it will also read off the headers of any non-voice messages, like your regular E-MAIL and faxes! It does this with a voice synth included with it. Alas though... MS Phone only comes with the newest voice modems (Phone Blaster from Creative is one of them). The rumor mill suggests that MS will ship it with the next Office 95 release, though. Personally I'm hoping for it to come out as a retail product so I don't have to endure Delrina CommSuite. Thphth. ------------------------------ Subject: 10.3. Remote Mail basics for MS Mail, Internet Mail, CIS Mail, and Microsoft Network Mail users If an Exchange client supports Remote Mail, it will allow you to work interactively with your mail server. This means manually logging in, hand-selecting the messages you want to move, copy, or delete, and then transferring. Normally, when you select "Deliver now using..." or if you set up your client for a LAN or other continuous connection, it runs the chosen service, logs in, moves all of your mail from the server to your Inbox, transmits anything in your Outbox, then disconnects. This is quite blatant and quite efficient. Remote Mail however, in the same Tools menu, lets you fully control mail delivery, provided you enabled Remote Mail in your clients. NOTE: In the original Exchange product, you had to use several buttons (Connect, Update Headers, Transfer Mail) to complete a remote task. The Windows Messaging update combines these three buttons into one (Transfer Mail). This one click will send anything in your Outbox, download anything you marked in the headers list, and update the headers list, all at once. It will NOT copy, move, or delete mail unless you explicitly marked any mail for doing do. This is much simpler and it takes nothing away from Remote Mail functionality! In MS-Mail, using Remote Mail depends on your connection type. You can set different Remote Mail options for LAN and for Dial-up networking sessions, so if it's on the LAN it'll work one way, and if it's on a phone line it will work another. You will only get a Remote Mail choice for MS-Mail if you enabled it for whatever your current connection is. Slow machines will benefit if you enable Remote Mail for LAN connections, as the mail checks eat up processor time and load down the system. Internet Mail only has one place for defining the Remote Mail behavior: The Connection tab in Internet Mail properties. You either enable Remote Mail, or disable it and check for mail every so often (15 minutes by default). The latter works best if you have a POP3 server right on your LAN, otherwise, keep Remote Mail enabled. You can always do a Deliver Now if you want to do a batch mail delivery. CIS Mail always has Remote Mail enabled, but you can instruct it to dial out and check every so often as well. BillNet (TM) Remote Mail is also always enabled, and it will log you in to BillNet when you perform a delivery, either using Remote Mail, or Deliver Now. * 10.3.1. How can I keep mail on the server? Enable Remote Mail for whatever client you're using. This will let you view all the mail in your server by selecting "Update Headers", and hand-select pieces of mail for copying, moving, or deleting. To keep mail on the server, select the option "Mark to receive a copy" rather than "Mark to receive". Remote Mail always keeps a local copy of the mail list, so you needn't be attached to the server to maintain your list. It will attach to the server only if you tell it to, or if you perform any transfers, and it will update the list whenever a transfer occurs. It distinguishes read mail from unread mail by bolding unread mail. ------------------------------ Subject: 10.4. How can I keep a separate Inbox or address book for each user? (Exchange Profiles) Say you send MS Mail and Internet Mail from work, but you want to use the same copy of Exchange (and the same machine) for you home Internet Mail too. You can't load multiple copies of Internet Mail in one profile, but you can create a second (or third, or fourth) profile, add Internet Mail to it, and use different settings. All Exchange user settings go in the active Exchange profile. To make a new profile, bring up Inbox properties and hit "Show Profiles". Then select "Add". The Inbox Setup Wizard will run a second time, prompting you for a new profile name, and prompting you through all the setups of all installed mail clients. You can enable or disable whatever mail clients you wish. Then, when you get to the Personal Address Book and Personal Folders setup screens, be sure to specify a unique filename for the address book and mailbox, different from any previous profile. The wizard will create new files for you if they don't already exist. You CAN use the same address book (.PAB) and mailbox file (.PST) in multiple profiles, but why cause confusion? Then, in Tools/Options within Exchange, enable "Prompt for a profile to be used". This way when Exchange runs, you can choose the profile to run. You need to exit and re-start Exchange to swap between profiles. Be sure to allow it to completely exit (at least wait until the fax icon disappears) so it logs off from the services in the first profile. Profiles are cool for Exchange-enabled apps, because the apps will store their user settings per-profile. Internet Idioms, for example, can keep a unique signature for each profile. Schedule Plus for 95 also keeps unique schedule books and contact lists per profile. You don't even need to have a mail client; a profile only needs the Personal Folders and Address Book services. Exchange stores profiles in the user portion of the Registry, so User Profiles apply here as well. Each user can have their own set of Exchange profiles, of if you don't want to be bothered with the "Prompt for profile to be used" requester, use a single profile for each user. This is especially useful of you have roving users that use Schedule Plus for 95; if you keep the schedule and message files in your home directory, all of the books will follow you around the network. Now that's cool. ------------------------------ Subject: 10.5. Quick background on the Personal Address Book If you want to make up that bulk mailing list or that broadcast fax, here's where to do it. Hit Tools/Address Book and hit the blank card button (or File/New) to create an entry. The entries end up becoming a contact database of sorts, complete with full addressing should you choose to fill in all the blanks for each person. Then, when you send letters, you can add names from this address book directly. The most important entries to add to a new entry are the Name and E-MAIL address. The name entry shows up as a "friendly" name, but there are lots of spaces to fill in (like home mail address, work mail address, home & work phone & fax numbers, etc). The E-MAIL address actually has two components; the E-MAIL type and the E-MAIL address. Examples of Exchange E-MAIL addresses include [FAX:+1 (604) 555-1212] and [SMTP:gordonf@vcn.bc.ca]. You specify the address type when you create a new entry, so you don't need to memorize the bizarre formats I gave examples for, though they do work in the TO: boxes of letters. One special type of address book entry is the "Personal Distribution List", which is where you create groups of people to mail to. These groups can contain any number of people from your address book, even with different E-MAIL formats. To create a distribution list, first create all the entries you want in it, then create a distribution list and add the entries to it. When you send mail, use this distribution list as the destination address. MS Schedule Plus for 95 uses a similar address book for contact management, so be sure to fill in all the blanks when making up entries. This is actually another good reason to stick with Exchange; when you do get MS Office you will already have a powerful contact manager with a list of contacts ready to use. To make the Schedule+ contact list match the Exchange address book, visit Microsoft's "Application farm" which has this page (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/boes/bo/mailexch/exch/tools/appfarm/ schedaba.htm). Thanks to Sue Mosher for this one! A better Schedule+ address book service exists at http://www.thinkage.on.ca/shareware/schadp which completely REPLACES the Exchange address book service. Now you can keep ONE contact database for both Exchange AND Schedule+ (Makes me wonder why MS didn't do this in the first place!) Actually it can co-exist with the personal address book, but I didn't see anything preventing you from removing the PAB if you choose! Other Designed for Win95 apps will look for the address book for their own purpose (like Word 7's cover letter wizard). * 10.5.1. How do I import entries from other databases into the Address Book? Exchange can only directly import address books from the original MS Mail. Sue Mosher's web site (http://www.slipstick.com/exchange/) contains many programs that can import (and export) entries into the personal address book. ------------------------------ Subject: 10.6. Top ten misconceptions about Exchange 10. Exchange is a pig (OK so it's 4.2 MB, but that includes all the interface, remote mail, and address book! I'd like to see you run four mail programs and a fax program all at once in less than 4.2 MB) 9. It won't work with Win 3.1 Mail-enabled apps (Yes it does. Apps call MAPI.DLL to send mail) 8. It requires Win95 networking to work (Not if all you're doing is faxing or CIS mail) 7. It won't work with MS-Mail Remote (OK so it won't. But it does work with dial-up networking and the regular MS-Mail server, so use that instead) 6. It's a poor Internet Mail client (Grab Internet Idioms and stop bitching) 5. It won't work with MS-Mail shared folders (Download the Exchange Update to fix) 4. You need Exchange to run Schedule Plus for Win95 (Not. Only for workgroup functions) 3. You need Exchange Server to use it (Not. Exchange Server is a very different beast) 2. No one's writing clients for Exchange (well... Microsoft's writing clients... heh heh... just keep bugging software vendors, and visit Angry Greycat Designs) 1. It's only MS-Mail re-vamped (OK, but it's DRASTICALLY re-vamped!) ------------------------------ Subject: 10.7. Exchange Wish List IMAP4 client (With optional folder store on the mail server, a'la MS-Mail) Nicer Internet Idioms installer (Grab Anthony's installer kit from http://home.istar.ca/~anthony/) FidoNet point client (Store echoes as external folders a'la MS-Mail, send and receive echo mail) Quicker fax manipulation (Actually it's not bad, but I'd dump the E-MAIL format option for more speed; set the format to "Not Editable") Exit QUICKER! For some reason, an Exchange component (MAPISP32) stays resident for up to 30 seconds after exit! ------------------------------ Subject: 10.8. Exchange's other names, incarnations, versions, etc * Windows Messaging: This is a 3 MB update for Win95; it already comes with NT 4.0. It replaces all of Exchange's components including Internet Mail, and provides most of the bug fixes. You should still get the Cover Page update, and read Sue Mosher's FAQ if you use MS Fax and want to use this update. * Exchange Server Client: This is a massive 9 MB download that MS could've easily packaged up and sold, but instead decided to give it away. This is the same client that MS ships with Exchange Server. It installs into the exact same place as the built-in Exchange (which means far less confusion for Win95 users), and includes much of the functionality provided by Internet Idioms. * Microsoft Outlook: A replacement front end for Exchange. This ships with Microsoft Office 97. It combines Exchange and Schedule+ into one interface, and includes a very nice add-in manager which lets you disable troublesome extensions, such as Internet Idioms (which doesn't work with Outlook, by the way). I haven't seen much of this, but it does appear to turn Exchange upside-down and inside-out. Anthony has most of the answers in the Outlook 97 FAQ. ------------------------------ Subject: 10.9. How to get the spell checker to work Early versions of Win95 had some kind of spelling checker options built into Exchange, but these never worked. These options require a spell-check subsystem, such as the one included into MS Office 95, MS Works 95, and other MS products featuring spelling checkers. Normally, if you install a Designed for Win95 app that includes a spell checker, it adds the needed Registry entries to enable spell checking in Exchange. Some installers don't do this, however. MS's KB article Q137178 describes how to patch your system to include spell check capability. Thanks to syc@ibm.net for pointing this to me. Subject: 11. Disk compression and you * 11.1. Why should I bother? (Actually it's not as dumb as you might think) * 11.2. I heard that using disk compression is helpful on drives > 1 GB. Is this true? (yes.) + 11.2.1. Does disk compression on > 1 GB drives work with FAT32 as well? * 11.3. How do I compress my whole hard drive? (Avoid if possible!) * 11.4. How do I compress a part of my hard drive? * 11.5. How do I compress floppy disks? + 11.5.1. Enabling "Auto-mount" for removable compressed disks * 11.6. The DriveSpace driver takes 60 KB and I can't load it high! How do I do it? * 11.7. The DriveSpace 3 driver takes 100 KB and I can't load it high! How do I do it? * 11.8. How do I start my computer WITHOUT loading the DriveSpace driver? + 11.8.1. Why you should run DOS programs in DOS sessions in Win95 + 11.8.2. How do I load the Win95 DriveSpace driver, but NOT load the DOS DriveSpace driver? * 11.9. My computer is very, very, slow since I installed disk compression. How can I speed it up? + 11.9.1. Basic DriveSpace 3 theory; regular, HiPack, UltraPack, Compression Agent + 11.9.2. Why on slow computers, you should use "No compression" and still use DriveSpace 3 * 11.10. Top ten mistakes using disk compression * 11.11. Top ten mis-conceptions regarding DriveSpace 3 ------------------------------ Subject: 11.1. Why should I bother? (Actually it's not as dumb as you might think) With hard drives getting cheaper every day, you will believe (and I do too) that disk compression is a waste of processor time, a waste of system memory, and it makes the system unstable. But, here are some good reasons to use disk compression: On FAT file systems, it wastes far less disk space (Cluster sizes are minimum 512 bytes regardless of the partition's 'reported' cluster size) It reduces the amount of CPU time spent on the hard drive (It reads less off hardware) It makes good use of smaller hard drives Win95's disk compression take NO conventional memory (At least, when you run Win95 that is) ------------------------------ Subject: 11.2. I heard that using disk compression is helpful on drives > 1 GB. Is this true? DriveSpace 3, in particular, is helpful for drives > 1 GB, if you set compression to "none". This is because DriveSpace will use a smaller physical cluster size. FAT file systems have a 65 thousand cluster limit (64 K, or 65 536 clusters); this means as the drive gets bigger, the cluster size gets bigger too. On a 1 GB hard drive, the cluster size is 32 KB! That's a lot of disk space wasted if your file is much smaller than 32 KB! DriveSpace (and Stacker, and what-have-you) use their own file system and emulate FAT, and they can compress the unused space in a cluster. DriveSpace 3, in particular, will use no more than 512 bytes per simulated cluster, if your file is smaller than this. You can observe this by running DEFRAG on a compressed drive in Win95; after the initial Defrag pass, it will de-fragment a second time, showing the relative sizes of each cluster. Tightly compressed clusters will appear shorter. * 11.2.1. Does disk compression on > 1 GB drives work with FAT32 as well? Apparently not. MS describes FAT32 in KB article Q154997 and they clearly state that disk compression does not work on it (Hey, Stac Electronics: That's your cue! Get on it!) This probably has something to do with FAT32 being almost completely different from original FAT and VFAT; the root directory being a real FAT chain instead of a couple of sectors, for example. ------------------------------ Subject: 11.3. How do I compress my whole hard drive? I say Avoid If Possible. If you have to re-install Win95, you might not be able to read the compressed drive to perform the re-installation on! However, it can be done. You will have to have Disk Compression installed in Win95; check Add/Remove Programs / Windows Setup / Disk Tools. Then, right-click on your target hard drive and bring up its properties. You should see a Compression tab which gives you two options. Select the option to compress the whole hard drive. This built in compression (Affectionately called "DriveSpace 2") will re-boot your computer and run a compression process in a "miniature" Windows 3.1 environment. This means you can't use your computer while this happens. This does take a long time, so you should get it started and let it run overnight. When completed, you will have two active drive letters, or volumes; your original hard drive (Re-named to "H:" or some such thing) and your new compressed hard drive (Renamed "C:" to replace your original hard drive). ------------------------------ Subject: 11.4. How do I compress a part of my hard drive? OK so you heeded my warning. Good. You have to install Disk Compression if you didn't already do so. Before running DriveSpace, de-fragment the hard drive you're placing the compressed volume on. This will maximize the space the compressed volume can take. Then, bring up properties of the target hard drive. In the Compression tab, select the option to create a new compressed volume. This will run DriveSpace, create the new .CVF file, and tell you to re-boot your computer. Much quicker. If you plan to use DriveSpace this way, you should do so right after you complete your Win95 installation, and create a compressed volume with all the remaining space. This will maximize the drive space that gets compressed, and keep your Win95 installation uncompressed, ready to re-install if necessary. Maybe leave about 100 MB uncompressed for the Program Files folder, which always goes on your booting drive. ------------------------------ Subject: 11.5. How do I compress floppy disks? Bring up properties for your floppy drive, and select the "Compression" tab. You only have one compression option here; you can't put a separate CVF on a floppy disk. The rest of it works like compressing your whole hard drive. It's best to do this with blank disks; otherwise you will waste time compressing the files already on the floppy. Use this technique for any other removable media; optical disks, SyQuest disks, whatever. * 11.5.1. Enabling "Auto-mount" for removable compressed disks Back in DOS 6.0, you had to manually mount compressed floppies, and unmount them before ejecting them. Win95 will automatically mount compressed floppies if you allow it to. Run DriveSpace, then in Advanced/Settings, turn on the Auto-Mount switch. This is normally turned on by default. The first time you access the removable disk, if it sees a DRVSPACE.xxx file, it will use that instead of the actual disk. No, you can't copy .CAB files to compressed floppies; the files in a CAB are already compressed. ------------------------------ Subject: 11.6. The DriveSpace driver takes 60 KB and I can't load it high! How do I do it? In order for Win95 to actually start, Win95 DOS has to see any compressed drives you might have installed Win95 on. There is a real mode DriveSpace driver (and a real-mode DRVSPACE.INI settings file) in the root of your boot drive, though they're hidden. If you have an empty CONFIG.SYS file (which you should), when Win95 starts it will remove the real mode DRVSPACE.SYS driver and run the protected mode driver in its place, freeing up the 60 KB. If you insist on keeping a DOS configuration (Or if you specified a special DOS config for any of your games), you can continue to use DEVICEHIGH=%WINDIR%\COMMAND\DRVSPACE.SYS /MOVE to re-locate the real mode driver to upper memory. ------------------------------ Subject: 11.7. The DriveSpace 3 driver takes 100 KB and I can't load it high! How do I do it? Ahh... monster driver! This thing is so big because it needs to have compression routines for the three types of compression: UltraPack, HiPack, and Standard. If you have enough upper memory, make the DRVSPACE.SYS /MOVE entry in CONFIG.SYS the very next DEVICE= right after EMM386. This will eat 100 KB of upper memory of course, and the rest of your real mode drivers probably won't fit in upper memory afterwards. Win95 will unload this monster driver from conventional memory when you run Win95, provided you didn't try to load it high. Do yourself a favor and run your DOS programs in DOS sessions. ------------------------------ Subject: 11.8. How do I start my computer WITHOUT loading the DriveSpace driver? Edit MSDOS.SYS and add or edit these lines to the [options] section: drvspace=0 dblspace=0 and re-boot. NOTE: If you do this, you can't access compressed drives from DOS of course, but you also can't access them in Win95 either! This is an important reason not to compreess your whole hard drive. * 11.8.2. How do I load the Win95 DriveSpace driver, but NOT load the DOS DriveSpace driver? Actually, there IS a way NOT to load the DriveSpace driver in MS-DOS Mode, AND use the compressed drive in Win95! You'll find this trick useful if you run many programs in Single Mode DOS or make up special DOS configurations for certain programs and games, as it saves a good 60 KB to 100 KB of conventional memory, and still lets you use the compressed drive under Win95 and in DOS sessions. This is a bit tricky, so only do it if you know what you're doing, AND you aren't picky about what drive letter the compressed drive takes, AND you didn't install Win95 on the compressed drive, AND you don't assign any network shares on the compressed drive (You'd have to re-share them each time you re-boot if you did this.) 1. Put in the entries to MSDOS.SYS above 2. Run Policy Editor, Select File/Open Registry, and in Local Computer/System/Run Services, add this entry: Name: Manually mount DriveSpace Drive (Actually you can call this what you want) Value: DRVSPACE.EXE /MOUNT=001 C: 3. Save changes to the Registry, and test by re-booting to "Command Prompt Only" (Press F8 on "Starting Windows 95..."). Check that you have lots of conventional memory free. 4. Type WIN to start Win95. Before any other programs load, you should get some floppy access and a message stating that your compressed drive has mounted. 5. Now you can re-boot normally, once you're sure everything works. What this does, is prevent the real mode DriveSpace driver from loading at all. Again, this means you can't access compressed drives outside of Win95. It also mounts the compressed drive, using protected mode drivers, before any other Win95 programs start (Run Services runs its programs before anything else does). You will get an annoying message on start up, but you had to pay the price somewhere for this cool trickery, no? * Syntax of DRVSPACE.EXE /MOUNT command: DRVSPACE /MOUNT=xxx y: /NEW=z: Where "xxx" is the number of the compressed volume (Find out by showing all files and looking for a DRVSPACE.001 file; the 001 is the number you put in the MOUNT= parameter). "y:" is the drive letter where the compressed volume exists. "z:" is the drive letter you assign the new compressed drive in the /NEW= parameter. NOTE: /NEW= does not always pick the drive letter you want, especially if you have network drives. It's best to leave out the /NEW= and just live with the drive letter it comes up with. You can specify a range of drive letters in the DRVSPACE.INI file, if you choose, to make the assignment consistent. Once it settles on a drive letter it will consistently use it, until you remove the compressed drive or re-assign the drive letter. ------------------------------ Subject: 11.9. My computer is very, very, slow since I installed disk compression. How can I speed it up? DriveSpace works best in Win95 if you have lots of RAM (16 MB), have lots of extra computing power ('DX2-66es are quite adequate for this), and some external SRAM for processor caching (256 KB is best). The CPU has to work harder to interpret compressed data, but it has to wait less time to actually get it. This is the trade-off. To speed compressed drives up, install DriveSpace 3 (in MS Plus!), and set compression to "none", or "none, unless it is xx% full, then use Standard". You still get the benefits of reduced cluster sizes even though you aren't compressing data. Later on, you can use Compression Agent to compress the drive overnight, or any other time you aren't using the computer. If you use DriveSpace 3 on a '486 class computer, do not use HiPack as the default file format. There's a reason MS didn't recommend that. Maybe even set compression to "None" and use Compression Agent to re-compress overnight, using HiPack then. HiPack takes less time to read than to write. Also, when using Compression Agent, DO NOT USE UltraPack! UltraPack is very, very, slow on '486 machines. I wouldn't even recommend it for Pentium machines slower than 100 MHz. If you're too cheap to buy MS Plus, simply make sure your swap file isn't on the compressed drive, and it's set to a fixed size. Do this from System Properties/Performance/Virtual Memory. Win95 doesn't actually compress the swap file, but it does go through the DriveSpace driver to access it. Move it to an uncompressed drive to remove that extra layer of protocol. Finally, make sure you have NO real mode disk drivers to handle CD-ROMs, etc, that might be sitting on the hard drive adapters. The Win95 disk driver can't load then, and it won't use the Win95 DriveSpace driver either. * 11.9.1. Basic DriveSpace 3 advice; regular, HiPack, UltraPack, Compression Agent DriveSpace 3 makes more drive space by compressing files tighter. It does so using Compression Agent, which gets automatically scheduled in System Agent when you install MS Plus. Run DriveSpace 3, select the compressed drive, then select Advanced/Settings. This selects how DriveSpace writes data to the compressed drive on the fly. As MS recommends, don't use HiPack on '486 class computers. I won't even use it on Pentium-75s. "Standard" is best for all '486 machines or better, though a slow '486 can benefit from the "None until..." setting. Use "None" on all '386 class machines. Now, DriveSpace 3 can uncompress data faster than it can compress it, so it makes sense to try to re-compress the drive during idle moments, like overnight. Compression Agent does this. Either in System Agent, or in Accessories/System Tools, run Compression Agent and hit its Settings button. For Pentiums faster than 100 MHz, you could try UltraPack, but I doubt you'll get a whole lot of extra disk space from it. All '486 systems can benefit by completely turning off UltraPack and specifying HiPack for the rest of the files (basically meaning "All of them".) Generally, reading back HiPacked files is quick, so you can specify that for even '386 class machines, but if you really can't handle the decrease in speed, use "Store them uncompressed". A re-compression run does take a LONG time, so do it overnight. Use System Agent to schedule re-compression, say, once a month, and schedule a thorough disk scan about an hour before Compression Agent runs. A Defrag after Compression Agent wouldn't hurt, but schedule it for a LONG TIME after Compression Agent. * 11.9.2. Why on slow computers, you should use "No compression" and still use DriveSpace 3 It handles bigger hard drives (compressed volumes larger than 512 MB) It reduces wasted disk space (for files smaller than 512 bytes, it only occupies 512 bytes, regardless of logical cluster size) It won't eat CPU time if you turn compression off ------------------------------ Subject: 11.10. Top ten mistakes using disk compression 10. Running your DOS games outside of Win95 (Not enough memory) 9. Deleting the DRVSPACE.001 file (Fortunately, Win95 has a safety mechanism for that!) 8. Deleting the DRVSPACE.BIN file 7. Using an old DOS compression program 6. Using a DOS driver for your IDE CD-ROM and DriveSpace (Get Win95 drivers for the IDE port and it'll find the CD-ROM) 5. Not using ScanDisk regularly (Use System Agent to do automatic disk scans) 4. Setting your estimated compression ratio higher than your real one (Then installing a big game...) 3. Using UltraPack on a '386 computer 2. Using Norton Disk Doctor for Win95 on DriveSpace 3 drives (ScanDisk is more reliable... Symantec released two patch sets to fix Norton Utilities) 1. Compressing your whole hard drive ------------------------------ Subject: 11.11. Top ten misconceptions regarding DriveSpace 3 from MS Plus 10. Norton Utilities for Win95 works on it (Sorry... it reported false errors on mine!) 9. It's faster than "DriveSpace 2" (At least not at first...) 8. I need a Pentium-133 to use it (Just don't use UltraPack) 7. It eats more conventional memory (Actually, it eats NONE under Win95, if set up properly) 6. I can compress my whole drive with it (Yeah... then try re-installing Win95) 5. It's useless on '386 machines 4. It makes my computer unstable (use System Agent to schedule disk scans) 3. A virus can wipe out the system (A nasty virus could wipe out the system, compressed or not) 2. MS deliberately crippled Win95's built-in DriveSpace to make us buy MS Plus 1. It's the best compression program for Win95 (Actually, it's the ONLY one... heh heh... Stac, you lose this round) Subject: 12. Running MS-DOS games * 12.1. Why you should run your DOS games in DOS sessions under Windows 95 + 12.1.1. I only get 540 KB free and I have no CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT. Are you lying to me? * 12.2. Quick lesson on PIF files + 12.2.1. I installed DirectX 3 and now my DOS games won't run in a DOS session... why? * 12.3. How do I use upper memory in Windows 95? + 12.3.1. Why you should run your DOS games in DOS sessions under Windows 95 * 12.4. How do I use EMS or XMS memory? * 12.5. How do I use DPMI memory and DPMI programs? + 12.5.1. How come Strike Commander (tm) doesn't work? (And other VCPI games) * 12.6. How do I speed up this DOS game? * 12.7. Why do DOS programs "stutter" in a DOS session? * 12.8. Why shouldn't I use EMM386 (or other memory manager)? + 12.8.1. Why you should run your DOS games in DOS sessions under Windows 95 * 12.9. How do I set up network games? + 12.9.1. How to set up your network card + 12.9.2. Why you should run your DOS games in DOS sessions under Windows 95 * 12.10. Why do you keep telling me to run my games under Win95? + 12.10.1. Why you should run your DOS games in DOS sessions under Windows 95 * 12.11. But this game won't run under Win95! How can I get it to work? + 12.11.1. How you can do away with "boot disks" forever! + 12.11.2. How to make network games work without running Win95 + 12.11.3. When (and when not) to use Intel's Configuration Manager in Single Mode DOS ------------------------------ Subject: 12.1. Why you should run your DOS games in DOS sessions under Windows 95 The big speech... here it comes. Skip it if you don't want to read about it. Win95 does all of its hardware control, its network control, its drivers, its protocols, whatever, in '386 protected mode, so none of its software really needs to run in conventional memory, or in upper memory. You get minimum 604 KB free conventional memory, no matter what hardware or drivers for Win95 you have loaded. In addition to this, all of the MS-DOS software interrupts, hardware interrupts, function hooks, etc operate in protected mode also. This means that DOS programs can still work, even though there aren't any DOS drivers handling the hooks. Win95 only provides a basic real mode driver set for basic compatibility (HIMEM, SETVER, IFSHLP, COMMAND); everything else runs outside of the DOS session. The protected mode hooks are re-entrant, so multiple DOS sessions can use them. They are also faster in many cases; CD-ROM performance greatly improves, for example. Win95 will also virtualize I/O spaces, if you enable that feature in a DOS program's properties. This is similar to what Windows NT does, but not as robust. This will prevent the programs from accessing the hardware directly. If a "protected" DOS program crashes, it won't take the rest of the system with it. "Protection" will, however, add to the CPU overhead and may cause a program not to run at all, which is why it's an option. NOTE: Don't confuse this direct hardware access with the DirectX API; DirectX programs run in protected Win32 sessions by design, and access the hardware through an absolute minimal API. DirectX has nothing to do with DOS programs accessing hardware directly. So, with all this benefit, and not eating any conventional memory and still providing a nice compatible DOS box, you should run your DOS games in DOS sessions in Win95. So, hide or delete your CONFIG.SYS, remove all TSRs in AUTOEXEC.BAT, get Win95 drivers for all your hardware, and read on. * 12.1.1. I only get 540 KB free and I have no CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT. Are you lying to me? Well, no. It's just when I wrote this thing it was before 4.00.950B (OSR2). Apparently, 950B likes to add a few things to MSDOS.SYS: now a configuration file instead of program code. The [options] section of MSDOS.SYS has these and probably many more switches that affect conventional memory usage: [Options] DoubleBuffer= Drvspace= Dblspace= These cause extra modules, named DBLBUF and DRVSPACE, to load into conventional memory. DBLBUF is a module that uses conventional memory as a read and write buffer for old devices like 8-bit SCSI adapters. If you use IDE or PCI SCSI you can remove DBLBUF=1 entirely or set it to zero. DRVSPACE is the real mode DriveSpace driver, needed to read compressed drives in real mode. Normally, this loads as part of the MSDOS module so Win95 can unload it when it starts, but this switch loads DRVSPACE.SYS explicitly, wether you use compressed drives ir not. Removing these lines causes the system to load DRVSPACE.SYS as part of MSDOS (as it should) ONLY if compressed drives exist. To properly edit MSDOS.SYS, go to a DOS prompt and type: attrib -h -s -r msdos.sys You may then edit this file with Notepad or EDIT.COM or whatever. ------------------------------ Subject: 12.2. Quick lesson on PIF files You can maximize a game's performance in a DOS session by fine tuning its session settings. Right-click on the executable that runs the game (batch file, COM file, EXE file, whatever), and select Properties. Hit the "Program" tab and, if necessary, change the command line used to run the game. Insert any parameters it needs, change the working directory, whatever. Hit the "Advanced" button and quickly see the "Prevent MS-DOS programs from detecting Windows" switch. If a game claims it can't run under Windows, turn on this switch. Now the game will think it's running in DOS. Hah, sucker! Ignore the rest of this window for now; hopefully we won't have to resort to the rest of the stuff here. Have a look at the other tabs; I'll cover them each in turn with each question. Win95 will save the changes you make here in a PIF file, or a "Shortcut to MS-DOS Program". Whenever you bring up properties for the program, it will bring up its PIF file. * 12.2.1. I installed DirectX 3 and now my DOS games won't run in a DOS session. Why? I had a whole e-mail quoted to me regarding this... here it is in its entirety: From: Paul Grillo Subject: Re: your FAQ Thanks for the tip on the PIF fix. Attached is a note confirming that the problem stems from directx3, and a kind of rude fix to it. In case you're interested. I found the solution to this problem. (thanks to Stefano dacyas@mbox.vol.it) > ------------------------------------------------------------------ > Sure, no problem. It's a rather odd fix, but it works, got it from > some DirectX dude at Microsoft. Find the file VJOYD.VXD from DirectX2 > or your original Win95 disks/CD/whatever and overwrite the one that > DirectX3 installs. This will fix the problem. The Microsoft guy says > you sacrifice some accuracy with the joystick, but I don't see any > difference. > ------------------------------------------------------------------ To extract VJOYD.VXD from Win95 cd use command "extract.exe /a /l c:\windows\system win95_02.cab vjoyd.vxd" (I put this solution on the news writing an answer to my question, but in a few days that answer has been expired) REMEMBER TO REBOOT AFTER SUBSTITUTING THAT FILE. Bye Basically, the VJOYD.VXD from DirectX 3 is broken. When you replace it with the VJOYD from DirectX 2 or earlier, or even with the original Win95 version, Win95 will let you run DOS games in a DOS session again. Strange. DirectX 5 corrects this problem too. ------------------------------ Subject: 12.3. How do I use upper memory? There's no such thing as "upper memory" under Win95, and no need to worry about it either, if you have Win95 drivers for all your stuff and run your games under Win95. I cover how to use upper memory in Single Mode MS-DOS later. ------------------------------ Subject: 12.4. How do I use EMS or XMS memory? In the program's properties, hit the Memory tab. You'll notice the defaults for these settings is "Auto"; this means Win95 will allocate memory as needed for this program to run. This can cause a lot of extra disk swapping, so you should find out what the game needs (Check its manual) and set the EMS and XMS values to match. Example 1: TIE Fighter (TM) (Floppy version) by LucasArts: TIE requires 2048 KB of EMS memory (Expanded memory), so set the EMS value to 2048 KB, and set XMS to None. Example 2: The Seventh Guest (TM) by Virgin/Trilobyte: T7G needs 4096 KB of XMS memory (Extended memory), so set its XMS setting to 4096 and its EMS setting to None. Example 3: DOOM (TM) by id Software: DOOM doesn't use EMS or XMS memory, so set both of these values to None. Leave the DPMI (DOS protected mode interface) memory on Auto. Notice that all games use one kind of extra memory or another, but not two at once. You can always set one and turn the other off. This will ease Win95's job of guessing what the game needs. Of course, if a game runs completely in conventional memory, turn off everything BUT conventional memory. Oh yeah, that "Protected" switch is in here; turn it on if you think this program causes Win95 to crash. That switch can make LINKS 386 operate in a DOS session where it otherwise wouldn't, for example. ------------------------------ Subject: 12.5. How do I use DPMI memory and DPMI programs? If a program doesn't claim to use XMS or EMS memory, chances are it's a protected mode program. DOOM by id and Descent (TM) by InterPlay are two such programs. In this program's Memory tab, turn off EMS and XMS memory, and set DPMI to whatever the game requires, or leave it on Auto. Auto mode will make Win95 allocate more RAM to the game as needed, but it will cause extra disk swapping. Set this to the game's recommended value, no higher than your total memory actually installed in the computer. If the game does its own disk swapping (like Descent does), fix the DPMI memory value to the game's recommended value and don't use Auto. There's no point in having Win95 and the game do swapping at the same time. Some DPMI games do bizarre stuff and may crash Win95 the first time running. If so, turn on the "Protected" switch just below the conventional memory setting. This will virtualize most of the I/O space in that game's DOS session. Turning on "Prevent DOS programs from detecting Windows" might help too. If the game does hardware detection, try by-passing it and specifying your video and sound card properties in the game manually. Descent has troubles detecting sound cards in a DOS session, for example. * 12.5.1. How come Strike Commander (TM) doesn't work? (And other VCPI programs) Breidavick Gistiheimili told me that Strike Commander wouldn't run in a DOS Session because it couldn't communicate with the "EMS Memory Manager". In reality, SC requires VCPI services. Win95 DOS sessions don't support VCPI unfortunately. EMM386 normally provides VCPI services in real mode. If you run a game in a DOS session and get a mysterious message to the effect that it wants EMM386, it's most likely that it wants VCPI memory. You will have to resort to the Single mode DOS techniques below to make the game run. ------------------------------ Subject: 12.6. How do I speed up this DOS game? The first time you try running a "standard" DOS game, it will try to run in a window on your desktop. Type ALT-ENTER to switch it to a full screen. To fix that setting in place, bring up the program's properties, hit the Screen tab, and set the screen usage to Full Screen. There are other screen controls here: "Fast ROM Emulation" works if the video driver emulates its BIOS in protected mode. Newest drivers from Cirrus Logic, for example, emulate their BIOSes in 32-bit DLLs. Try turning it off if you can't get VESA games working, though a properly written Win95 video driver should emulate VESA video modes in protected mode. "Dynamic memory allocation" specifies that Win95 will grab system memory as needed to update the game's display. Try turning this off if the display jitters, or the hard drive goes crazy as the display updates itself. ------------------------------ Subject: 12.7. Why do DOS programs "stutter" in a DOS session? DOOM will freeze on occasion, precisely four times, then continue on normally. John Goulden enlightened me on this behaviour. I used to think it had something to do with the VGA BIOS emulation or such stuff, but when I saw games like System Shock still animating some parts while freezing during game play, I thought it had to be something else. John says: This will also happen if network drivers are loaded but no network is connected. If the 'stutter' occurs four times in rapid succession, at intervals of precisely ten minutes, it is very likely Windows 95 polling for the nonexistent network. Remove the unneeded drivers and the problem goes away. I wondered why this didn't happen on a non-networked machine. Specifically, it seems to happen on systems that run Client for NetWare. The pausing might come from the client trying to reconnect to disconnected servers, or otherwise polling for a nonexistent network or server. Likewise, this pausing won't happen if you only have the Dial-up Adapter and TCP/IP protocol (No clients or services). This problem only seems to happen with DPMI games; particularly those that use the DOS4GW extender. ------------------------------ Subject: 12.8. Why shouldn't I use EMM386 (or other memory manager)? A real mode memory manager will interfere with Win95's protected mode memory management. If you include NOEMS in CONFIG.SYS, for example, no program in a DOS session can access EMS memory. Delete or hide your CONFIG.SYS and let Win95 provide EMS memory in DOS sessions. For those of you who paid money for Quarterdeck's QEMM 8.0: SUCKERS! Take it back and get your money back! ------------------------------ Subject: 12.9. How do I set up network games? Most of the net games use IPX protocol to communicate between several game computers on the network. Microsoft's "IPX/SPX Compatible" protocol works with these games. First, install your network card and load a Win95 driver for it. Then add IPX/SPX Protocol. If all you're doing is playing network games you can remove all other network components, such as Clients. If necessary, read up on How to set up a network card. Then run the game in its DOS session and set it up to use the network. It should find the hooks needed to use IPX and play normally, as though you loaded an IPX.COM driver. If not, complain to the game maker. A handful of old network games use NetBIOS to work with more networks. In this case you can use any network protocol, such as NetBEUI, to link the machines together. All the real mode NetBIOS hooks are there as well. To use both IPX and NetBIOS games, use the IPX/SPX protocol and turn on "I want to run NetBIOS over IPX" in IPX/SPX Properties. Modem games work by using the COM devices from DOS, so you don't need to use Dial-up Networking just to play a game over the modem. If, however, the game doesn't support modeming but DOES support IPX networking, you could try using IPX over the dial-up adapter, and rig one computer as a dial-up server. This is a bit extreme, as IPX over PPP is quite slow. ------------------------------ Subject: 12.10. Why do you keep telling me to run my games under Win95? I thought I answered this question at the top of this section! So you can save yourself the hassles of multi-config, loading crap high, running out of conventional memory, boot disks, whatever! Win95 can do DOS's jobs a lot quicker and with a lot less overhead. Yes, everything works. Yes, CD-ROM drives work. Yes, network cards work. Yes, you can do EMS/XMS/DPMI. Yes, sound cards work. Get a sound card that has Win95 drivers for it. Yes, visit Advanced Gravis for a Win95 driver. Or just trade your hardware in for hardware with Win95 support. ------------------------------ Subject: 12.11. But this game won't run under Win95! How can I get it to work? OK ok ok ok... so you can't live without playing this game (Star Trek: A Final Unity (TM) by Spectrum Holobyte falls into this category) and you can't run it in a DOS session. Or maybe you can; bring up the program's properties, hit the Program tab, hit "Advanced", and hit "Prevent DOS programs from detecting Windows". This'll make the "smarty" programs run in a DOS session. If that didn't work, read on. * 12.11.1. How to make a special DOS setup for this program that won't run in Win95: 1. Bring up properties for its start-up program again, and hit the Program tab. 2. Hit Advanced, and turn on MS-DOS mode. This will make Win95 exit before running the game. And since all the Win95 CD-ROM, netcard, etc drivers will unload when you run this: 3. Hit "Specify a new MS-DOS Configuration". This will activate the two text boxes below, so you can feed a special CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT for this program. 4. Fill in the empty spaces for CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. All your normal DOS drivers, memory managers, and TSRs should go in here. You can also copy from your CONFIG.DOS, and press CTRL-V (Paste) to copy it here; that does work. Be sure you use Win95 versions of HIMEM and EMM386, and other DOS version-specific drivers. 5. Save your changes and run the program. You should get a warning that you're about to enter MS-DOS mode. If you OK it, Win95 will re-boot your computer and run your special CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. When you exit the game, the system will re-boot into Win95 using the original DOS configuration (which should be empty!) With this setup, you can specify a DOS configuration just for this program without polluting your Win95 configuration. You will have to load all the real mode components necessary to make your hardware work, including real mode sound card and CD-ROM drivers. Net cards I'll cover later. Some useful stuff to include in these files are: * HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE: Yes, definitely include that in the special CONFIG.SYS you make. Use the Win95 versions. * SMARTDRV.EXE: You should have real mode disk caching here. Again, Win95 comes with its own version of SmartDrive. * PAUSE: Put this at the end of the special AUTOEXEC.BAT so you can prevent your game from starting right away. You can always press CTRL-C here and fine-tune the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, and re-boot to try again. When Win95 finally re-starts, it will copy your changes to the program's properties. Now that's cool. * LOCK C: If you want to run Windows 3.1 this way (Yes it is possible) and you want 32-bit disk/file access, include this command. LOCK will allow direct disk writes by DOS programs, including Win 3.1's memory manager and FASTDISK drivers. Some DOS games that do disk swapping may also require this command. Use this with caution; it also allows viruses to do their dirty work. * MSCDEX.EXE: If you use a real mode CD-ROM driver, you obviously need MSCDEX to mount it and run it. Load MSCDEX before SmartDrive, so SmartDrive can cache CD-ROM reads. Save on conventional memory this way by specifying /M:4 (minimal buffer size). Win95 keeps this file in %WINDIR%\COMMAND. * MOUSE.EXE or MOUSE.COM: A must for mouse driven games. Keep in mind, that "MS-DOS Mode", or "Single Mode MS-DOS" is MS-DOS through and through, except for the LOCK and the direct disk access inhibitor. You can use all the MS-DOS memory management techniques you learned back in DOS 5.0. You might also want to disable the DriveSpace Driver if you use disk compression, and you can't get enough conventional memory. You could also try running MEMMAKER, if you're really desperate, in this configuration; add the old DOS utilities from OTHER\OLDMSDOS, then while you're in a special DOS configuration, run MEMMAKER. As long as you keep Win95 booting in this mode (where it says "Win95 is now starting your MS-DOS based program..."); the changes that MEMMAKER makes will only affect this particular configuration; it won't affect your normal Win95 configuration. This above technique replaces boot disks and Multi-Boot entirely! If you use PIF files that specify MS-DOS mode, you can throw away all your boot disks and your multi-boot CONFIG.SYS file. You can even set up multiple PIFs for the same program; re-name the PIF file that the Properties sheet made up, and bring up Properties for the program again; it will build a new PIF file. Another cool trick is to look for an "Exit to DOS" file in your Win95 directory, bring up its properties, and set it up to use a new MS-DOS configuration. This way, whenever you "Restart computer in MS-DOS mode", you will run this configuration. Real handy for running a bunch of games without having to make a special configuration for each. In this mode, type EXIT or WIN to return to Win95. You can also edit the custom startup files within DOS mode; when Win95 finally re-starts, it will update the .PIF file with the changes you made. * 12.11.2. How to make network games work without running Win95 Network Setup not only installs protected mode drivers for your card; it also installs NDIS 2.0 real mode components specifically for MS-DOS mode. You will need to install a Win95 net card driver and IPX/SPX Protocol for this to work. In the special AUTOEXEC.BAT you make for MS-DOS mode games, include: NET START NWLINK This will load a real mode protocol manager, net card driver, and Microsoft's IPX compatible protocol. You can go a step further and type NET START NWREDIR to load a NETX compatible client for NetWare, if you need to get to your games stored on the NetWare server, and you installed Microsoft's Client for NetWare. These components will try to load high if you have upper memory available. Put this at the beginning of the special AUTOEXEC.BAT, to improve upper memory usage. * 12.11.3. When (and when not) to use Intel's Configuration Manager in Single Mode DOS If you use a PnP sound card and you want to use Single Mode DOS to run those pesky games, you may need to add this line in your special config.sys: device=C:\(whatever)\dwmcfg.sys This line performs the same PnP magic that Win95 does when it normally starts. You MUST include it BEFORE EMM386.EXE so it doesn't interfere with EMS memory and upper memory. Don't worry; it doesn't stay in memory so no need to load it high. However, systems with PnP BIOSes may NOT need this. Depending on how well your PnP BIOS configures your cards, you can get away with just loading your normal sound card drivers (SB16.SYS and CTMMSYS.SYS for example) and it will use the I/O, IRQ, and DMA settings you chose in Win95's Device Manager. This works because the BIOS and Win95 store this config info in the NVRAM on your system board. So, for PnP sound cards in Single mode DOS, you CAN use DWMCFG but load it BEFORE HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE. Use it only if you HAVE to; Non-PnP systems will need it, but most PnP systems will not. Subject: 13. Microsoft Plus (TM) and other Win95 add-ons * 13.1. What is Microsoft Plus and why do I care? * 13.2. How do I use System Agent? + 13.2.1. But (this program) already installed a scheduler! + 13.2.2. How can I use System Agent instead of those other schedulers? + 13.2.3. Why should I use System Agent instead of those other schedulers? + 13.2.4. Top ten reasons why System Agent is cool to use * 13.3. How do I use Internet Explorer and Setup Wizard? + 13.3.1. Why should I get Internet Explorer 2.0? * 13.4 How do I use DriveSpace 3? + 13.4.1. Is it safe to use Norton Utilities for Win95 with DriveSpace 3? + 13.4.2. Is it safe to use DriveSpace 3 on FAT32 drives? * 13.5. How do I use Desktop themes? + 13.5.1. How do I make my own theme and save it? + 13.5.2. Where can I get more themes? + 13.5.3. Why do all the themes I downloaded take up so much hard drive space? + 13.5.4. How did Microsoft replace all the drive, folder, printer, etc icons? + 13.5.5. How can I replace all the drive, folder, printer, etc icons? * 13.6. How do I use the "Visual Enhancements"? + 13.6.1. How do I remove the Visual Enhancements? * 13.7. How do I use the Dial-up Networking Server? * 13.8. How do I use 3D Pinball? + 13.8.1. How come 3D pinball doesn't play any music or sound effects? * 13.9. Top ten things missing from Microsoft Plus * 13.10. What are the MS Power Toys? ------------------------------ Subject: 13.1. What is Microsoft Plus and why do I care? MS Plus! is all the stuff that Microsoft should've included in Win95, but decided they wanted to make you pay more for them. :-) OK, it's really a bunch of add-ons designed for high powered computers ('486 machines and Pentiums) to make your system run a little smoother and look a little nicer. Keep in mind that the Plus stuff is for high powered computers, which was probably the biggest reason MS didn't include this stuff with the operating system. ------------------------------ Subject: 13.2. How do I use System Agent? System Agent is a little scheduler that runs programs at certain times. It's quite handy because it already schedules disk maintenance processes, so all you have to do is keep your computer turned on and it keeps itself clean. To install System Agent, install MS Plus. A little icon shows up in the SysTray; the place with the date and time in it on the Taskbar. Double-click it to bring up the System Agent manager. You will see four programs already scheduled (five, if you installed DriveSpace 3) which will scan your hard drives, de-fragment them, check for low disk space, and re-compress any DriveSpace 3 drives you have. You can bring up properties for these programs, and change their settings and their scheduled run times. System Agent-Aware programs will offer special "Scheduled settings" requesters if you change their settings from here. NOTE: The ScanDisk entries don't automatically fix errors, and they will display prompts on the screen when they do find errors. Be sure to change each scheduled program's settings so they automatically fix errors. You can also add new programs to this list. Hit Program/Schedule new program. Hit Browse to search for the program you want to run, or type its command line in the box. NOTE: Programs with long filenames or directory names belong in quotes, like "C:\Program Files\Plus!\RunMe.EXE" /parameter1 for example. Bring up properties for the included programs for examples. Any clickable object in Explorer can run from System Agent, including DOS .PIF files and even documents. I specify "PIF" because it's better to specify a DOS program's settings and use the PIF as the object to run. Win 3.1 and Win95 programs and documents will have their icons appear in this window. * 13.2.1. But Norton Anti-Virus (TM)/F-Prot Anti-Virus (TM)/Colorado Backup (TM) already installed a scheduler! So? You paid for System Agent when you bought MS Plus. Use it. I get a real kick out of people who run three different schedulers and then complain that their system swaps to the hard drive so often. They're a waste of memory. * 13.2.2. How can I use System Agent instead of those other schedulers? First you will need to remove the other schedulers. The three I mentioned all insert an icon in the Startup group in your Start Menu. They're easy enough to remove; here's how to remove Start Menu items. Second, read up on the programs you want to schedule. The three I mentioned all have instructions for running them from a command line. For example, Norton Anti-Virus will scan all local hard drives by running: NAVW32.EXE /L The /L means "local". Be sure to test this command line from a DOS session; Win95 DOS sessions can run Windows programs, and the START command in a DOS session can launch documents. Third, Hit the Program menu in System Agent Manager and select "Schedule new program". In the "Program to run" box, type in the command line that makes your program run (like the NAVW32 /L example above). Tell the program to run minimized if you wish. Last, select "When to run..." and pick a time for this program to run. Be careful not to overlap programs; you don't want an Anti-Virus scan to happen while running ScanDisk, for example. The System Agent Manager shows the last started and stopped times of all scheduled programs, so use this as a guide for adding new programs and preventing overlap. For another example, Win95's built in Backup lets you launch the backup set rather than the program. Just open the Full System Backup from Backup, which enables Registry back-up, then select the files or drives you want to back up. Pick your target (usually your tape drive), pick your options, and save the backup set with a unique name. Finally, schedule this backup set to run (by including the .FST itself; not the program, and don't include a START command; there's no need) in System Agent. Colorado Backup works much the same way. Other back-up programs will have different commands to use; experiment from a DOS prompt to get the commands right. * 13.2.3 Why should I use System Agent instead of those other schedulers? Is this a rhetorical question? You paid for it when you bought MS Plus. * 13.2.4. Top ten reasons why System Agent is cool to use 10. It takes practically no memory 9. It can stop scheduled programs if you start using your computer 8. It can run stuff on start up if you don't like Startup groups (Great for User Profile users) 7. It's always running (except in Safe Mode) 6. It's easy to schedule programs to run 5. It keeps your hard drives clean by running ScanDisk for you 4. It knows when you're on batteries (notebooks) and won't run big programs if you're on batteries 3. It can wake you up in the morning (heh heh... just schedule a .WAV file to play every day at 6:00 AM) 2. You don't need a Pentium to use it (heh heh) 1. It comes with all the other cool stuff in MS Plus ------------------------------ Subject: 13.3. How do I use Internet Explorer and Setup Wizard? When you re-start the computer after installing Plus, you'll notice an obvious "The Internet" icon staring at you. Open it. This launches the Internet Setup Wizard. I won't get redundant, so to make it short & sweet, get an answer sheet from your service provider with answers to these questions: * Access phone number * Login name and login password * DNS server addresses * Gateway address (if using default gateway, ignore this) * E-MAIL address * POP3 server login name and password (Usually same as dial-up login name and password) * POP3 server name (usually mail.somewhere.com or something like that) * Also SMTP server name for outgoing mail (if it's not the same as the POP server) Check out the detailed Setup Wizard Instructions for the rest of the details. The wizard will add all the needed Win95 networking components to get you hooked to The Internet. * 13.3.1. Why should I get Internet Explorer 2.0? Well, It's free, has a lot of things missing from the web browser included in Plus, and it's a direct upgrade. Visit the Internet Explorer Home Page. After you run the Internet Setup Wizard you could get a different browser instead, like NCSA Mosaic, and the auto-dialer and stuff will still work with it. ------------------------------ Subject: 13.4. How do I use DriveSpace 3? No point in being redundant... check out the Disk Compression Section. * 13.4.1. Is it safe to use Norton Utilities for Win95 with DriveSpace 3? I don't trust it, even though Symantec swears by it. Contrary to popular belief, Microsoft's ScanDisk and Defrag (You know; those programs that MS pirated off Symantec?) work just fine on DriveSpace 3 drives, keeping them clean, especially if you schedule these programs to run regularly with System Agent. Notice though, that Plus comes with replacement versions of ScanDisk and Defrag, so that's enough to scare me from third party disk maintenance tools... MS must've changed something fundamental with DriveSpace 3. * 13.4.2. Is it safe to use DriveSpace3 on FAT32 drives? I guess not. DS3's setup program will blatantly refuse to create a compressed volume file on a FAT32 drive. (Hey, Stac Electronics! That's your cue... get on it!) ------------------------------ Subject: 13.5. How do I use Desktop Themes? Be sure to install at least one theme from the included Plus themes to enable themes in general, otherwise Plus Setup won't install any theme support. You can always hand-delete the components of the theme and retain theme support. From here, you can use a theme from the included list, or download a favorite from www.windows95.com. * 13.5.1. How do I make my own theme and save it? To make your own theme, make your own custom changes to the desktop scheme, colour scheme, sound scheme, mouse pointers, and screen saver, using the Properties sheets or control panel programs for each. Once you're satisfied with your work, run the new Themes control panel and "Save As..." to create a .theme file. You may also change the icons for My Computer, Net Neighborhood, and Recycle Bin. Bring up Display properties and hit the Plus! tab to change them. You should store all the custom icons, animated pointers, sounds, screen saver, and bitmaps in C:\Program Files\Plus!\Themes so your theme users can install the theme easily. If you use a custom font, include instructions on copying the font to the Windows\Fonts folder. Batch files can use the Win95 START command if necessary. * 13.5.2. Where can I get more themes? www.windows95.com has a well regulated themes section. I'm sure other major FTP sites will also carry Plus themes. Usually a custom theme has a special installation procedure; you have to install a font, copy a screen saver to your Windows directory, copy a bitmap to your Windows directory, etc, for use in the theme. All of these options (except custom fonts) can go anywhere in the hard drive, so C:\Program Files\Plus!\Themes is a good place to keep them. * 13.5.3. Why do all the themes I downloaded take up so much hard drive space? Be warned: a typical theme is about 750 KB to 1 MB in size, and that's the compressed size! Be reasonable; pick a theme after you browsed all the themes you wanted to see, and delete the components of the others. * 13.5.4. How did Microsoft replace all the drive, folder, printer, etc icons? This is actually quite "cool" how they did this. Explorer has Registry entries for each icon type it displays, and grabs that icon type from an .ICO or .DLL file when it starts. It usually grabs them from SHELL32.DLL. Plus Themes also support these Shell icons, though they don't document them. Look for a library file labeled COOL.DLL (I'm not making this up!) and QuickView it, or try changing the icon for any shortcut and use COOL.DLL as the source for the new icon. There are icons in that library to replace all the normal Shell icons. Theme support also includes replacing the SHELL32 icons with these COOL ones. You won't notice any changes to the icons until you use 65 thousand or 16 million colour modes; then the system over-writes COOL.DLL with a HiColor version. The HiColor icons really stand out compared to the 256 colour ones. NOTE: If you ever have to re-install Win95, Setup will restore the original SHELL32 icons; you'll need to re-install Plus to restore the COOL icons. Angelo Di Pierro says these HiColor icons are really 256 colour icons (eight bitplanes) and you can control which version of the icons come up with the Registry key HKEY_USERS\.Default\ControlPanel\Desktop\WindowMetrics (or HKEY_CURRENT_USER\etc... if you use User Profiles) and the value "Shell Icon BPP". Use values 8, 16, or 24. This seems to work regardless of what display mode you're actually using. You can also change the Icon size in this key; it support three size versions (small, normal, and large). This logic works because modern DLL and .ICO files (including COOL.DLL) include several versions of each icon. Theme support does not include directly modifying these icons, but you could do some searching with REGEDIT (if you feel adventurous) for the key "DefaultIcon" in any of the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID sections. There is a DefaultIcon key for most of those. * 13.5.5. How can I replace all the drive, folder, printer, etc icons? This is a theory, but it is possible based on the COOL.DLL stuff last section. COOL.DLL is really a 16-bit library (QuickView it to see for yourself). So, it is possible to edit COOL.DLL with a Win 3.1 icon editor that supports library files (such as Borland's resource editor for Win 3.1 which comes with Turbo C++), or copy it and replace all the icons. This is safer than Registry hacking, and it's easier to transport with your theme. Angelo says the best icon editor around is "Microangelo". You can also find many HiColor icons at http://www.southern.edu/people/jrbeck/iconpacks (I hope you can find Microangelo there!) Once you do that, save it with the name COOL.DLL and replace the one in your SYSTEM directory with this one. You will need to re-start Win95 for this to take effect. You will need to replace the Computer, Net Hood, and Recycle Bin icons the normal way, but the icons can come from the COOL.DLL replacement you make up. NOTE: Check out the INFGEN.EXE tool which comes with Service Pack 1 Admin Edition. Since many of the newest themes include replacement LOGO.SYS files, new fonts, and the like, it might make sense to prepare a theme installable from Add/Remove Programs / Windows Setup / Have Disk. Win95 .inf files can contain any kind of configuration info, including Registry changes and replacements for any kind of file. This method can also work if the user doesn't have MS Plus installed! Every time I see the file "COOL.DLL" I think of an AVI file Microsoft distributed with their VidTest 1.0 package, which had Bill Gates saying "Cool!" at the end of it. Look for COOL.AVI in the MS Multimedia Demo CD-ROM, or in VidTest. ------------------------------ Subject: 13.6. How do I use the "Visual Enhancements"? Check out the Plus! tab in Display Properties. This tab shows up when you install the enhancements from Plus Setup. From here, you can enable full window drag (which drags the contents of a window instead of an outline), wallpaper scaling, font smoothing, etc. Many of these options only work on fast computers with faster video cards. Don't attempt to use these on a computer less than a '486 with some kind of high speed video (VESA local bus, PCI) and a proper video driver for Win95. Font Smoothing only works on 65 thousand or 16 million colour displays; it uses gray shades to fill in the jagged edges of large point sizes, and really isn't necessary if you use TrueType a lot. * 13.6.1. How do I remove the Visual Enhancements? Just turn them off in Display Properties, on the Plus! tab. ------------------------------ Subject: 13.7. How do I use the Dial-up Networking Server? Make sure you install Dial-up Networking before you install Plus. If you choose the dial-up server, you will see a new "Dial-up server" entry in the Connections menu. Dial-up server works with Win95 (PPP) dial-up clients, and Windows for Workgroups (RAS) clients. Check out the Dial-up server Details. From here, select a modem (all the modems appear as tabs in this requester) and enable or disable caller access. If you use User Level Security you can allow particular users on this dial-in connection, or you can install a password. You may only enable one modem as a dial-in modem; Microsoft had to disable this functionality so it doesn't kill sales of NT server. heh heh The dial-up server uses the same bindings as the dial-up connections, so you need to install the Dial-up Adapter and protocols for it in your Network Properties. It will automatically use all protocols available to it for PPP clients, but only use NetBEUI for RAS clients. NOTE: WFWG dial-in clients (using their included RAS software) won't work with Win95 dial-up servers running User Level Security, because the dial-up server can't get a clear-text version of the NT domain password. If you want WFWG clients to dial into NT domains through Win95 dial-up servers, disable user level security on the dial-up server! The server also acts as a NetBIOS and IPX router to any network it's connected to, and there's no way to turn off routing. Administrators: If you don't want your users to open up your network to the world, disable all Win95 dial-up servers through system policies. ------------------------------ Subject: 13.8. How do I use 3D Pinball? Use? Play, you mean. Just install it from Plus Setup. You'll find the icon for it in your Games group on your Start Menu, along with the other classic time wasters like Minesweeper, etc. * 13.8.1. How come 3D pinball doesn't play any music or sound effects? Most likely because you don't have a sound card, but if you do, turn on the Music and Sound from the game's Options menu. The first time you run Pinball you'll find these turned off. Music won't play unless you have a working MIDI device installed. This works by default on cards with Win95 drivers, but Win 3.1 drivers require special MIDI mapper tuning. Gravis Ultrasound users will have to manually load a patch map into the GUS's memory before 3D Pinball will play music. Get updated drivers from www.gravis.com to fix this. ------------------------------ Subject: 13.9. Top ten things missing from Microsoft Plus 10. IMAP4 client for Exchange instead of POP3 9. Internet Explorer 2.0 8. Nice method to replace any Shell icon 7. Hardware interface to coffee pot, to start it from System Agent (Right after it plays a .WAV file for a wake-up alarm!) 6. Method of starting a dial-up connection from System Agent (Any ideas here?) 5. Win95 admin tools for NT and NetWare networks (The NT resource kit does have Win95 admin tools though) 4. Good TCP/IP control utility for setting RTU, TTL, etc 3. Internet Idioms for Exchange 2. A proper Marijuana plant icon for the Recycle Bin in the 60's theme 1. A TCP/IP router for the Dial-up Server ------------------------------ Subject: 13.10. What are the MS Power Toys? The Power Toys are system hacks that the Shell group over at MS cooked up to "improve" some of the finer points of Win95. I don't advocate using these things if you don't know how to even use the basic OS. Even MS will warn you that you're on your own when you use these. The Power Toys home page describes them better than I could, but for the sake of simplicity I'll document what to watch out for. Don't fall into these traps: * TweakUI can add unnecessary switches to the MSDOS.SYS settings file. These settings can load DriveSpace drivers and double buffer drivers that waste conventional memory. This is the most common memory-waster in Single Mode DOS. To remove TweakUI's settings you need to manually edit the MSDOS.SYS file and remove the offending entries. * CabView won't uninstall properly, and I don't know how to remove it without re-installing Win95. * QuickRes can cause some Win 3.1 apps to freeze; most don't support dynamic colour-depth changes or screen resolution changes. Diamond's video drivers do much the same thing, though I'd rather use QuickRes than Diamond's software. Just exit all apps before changing the screen mode. Just to make things interesting, the Kernel group did the same thing... and henceforth came the Kernel Toys. These are really advanced things, but in relation to FAQ page 12, I really like the MS-DOS Mode configuration tool the best. This tool lets you customize (or add more) components you can add to a DOS config via the "Configuration..." button in a game's PIF file. Perfect for setting up someone else's machine (great for OEMs) where they can customize their DOS mode settings without hand-writing the special config files. The Time Zone Editor lets you customize the time zone file in case you travel a lot and can't find the time zone you're in amongst the built-in choices. Subject: 14. Stuff that doesn't belong in the other categories (and my own personal rantings) * 14.1. Why did Microsoft change Windows so much? + 14.1.1. What posessed you to write all of this stuff? + 14.1.2. How can I make best use of the information you provided? * 14.2. How come (this old Win 3.1 driver) doesn't work? * 14.3. How come (this old Win 3.1 driver) works? I thought it wasn't supposed to work! * 14.4. Why shouldn't I run (this old Windows 3.1 program)? * 14.5. Can I run Win95 on my '286 with 2 MB of RAM? (joke) * 14.6. Can I run Win95 on my '386-SX with 4 MB of RAM? (a bit of a joke, but it does run) * 14.7. Why do 32-bit programs seem slower than the original 16-bit ones? * 14.8. Why didn't Novell/WordPerfect/Corel (tm) release a 32-bit version of PerfectOffice (tm) yet? * 14.9. I want to get a Pentium Pro (tm) system, but isn't it slower running Win95 than a Pentium? * 14.10. Top ten reasons why Microsoft created Windows 95 * 14.11. Top ten things missing from Windows 95 * 14.12. Top ten answers to Microsoft's question: "Where do you want to go today?" ------------------------------ Subject: 14.1. Why did Microsoft change Windows so much? Let's face it; Microsoft Windows was a lame DOS extender with fancy CPU-draining graphics. Even with all the good apps written for it, the base was shaky. Too many app writers also hacked and patched Windows so much that nothing worked right together. Win95 turned the lame DOS extender into as much of a full fledged OS as possible, without removing DOS altogether. The Win95 designers tried to take the best ideas, best patches, best hacks, and integrate them "nicely" into the OS. For example, you can have virtual desktops with any video card now. The COM port drivers take advantage of new hardware by design. It still uses fancy CPU-draining graphics, but it's not just a DOS extender anymore. They supposedly got a bunch of "average" people in to rate the OS and user interface as it stood. They took suggestions from many people of different walks of life, then totally ignored them. Supposedly, Win95 is now the OS that anyone can use. Yeah right. You have to give them credit for a good effort though. Not to mention all the features they pirated from Apple, Xerox, Amiga Tech, and IBM, do make it a bit easier to get along with. MS also wants to bury DOS for good. I believe this, because of the penultimate Designed for Win95 requirement: The product must run in Windows NT Workstation too. Besides... too many people out there are ignoring Win95 in favor of NT. R.I.P. D.O.S. * 14.1.1. What possessed you to write all this stuff? A base need to tell all the Win95 newcomers out there to Please read the manual... and since many of these weirdities come up in my work every day, it was about time I put it all in one place and use my favorite answer to all of these questions: RTFM. * 14.1.2. How can I best make use of this information? I admit, as hard as I try to make all this as simple as possible to read, there are still concepts that are very unclear to new users. I draw on many of these concepts to write the FAQ. So, to make best use of it: 1. Read the small booklet that came with your PC. Learn a bit about its special features (especially features that Win95 might have troubles with, like your new voice modem) 2. Run the Win95 Tour. Ten minutes will save you several hours of searching through this FAQ for the simple answers. You can start the tour by hitting the Start button, then hitting "Help". The very first topic on the very top of the Help window is "Tour: ten minutes to using Windows". 3. Read the slightly larger book that Microsoft supplied with Win95 (the book with the license certificate pasted on the front, or the one that says, "Getting started"). Here you can learn about how to start up Win95, how to use Windows Explorer, the simple applets, and everything else the tour didn't show you. 4. Then get your questions in mind and browse the headers of each of these pages to find them here, and then see the answers they link to. 5. Ask other people if you're in doubt of the answers, or ask me. 6. Ask questions that aren't in the FAQ so I can add them to it. ------------------------------ Subject: 14.2. How come (this old Win 3.1 driver) doesn't work? It probably replaced some core Win95 system file, then Win95 replaced its version back. This happens with communication programs that replace COMM.DRV with their own. Win 3.1 video drivers tend to hack USER.EXE and GDI.EXE these days, to provide virtual desktops and such nonsense. Printer drivers often have their own versions of UNIDRV.DLL or whatever. Ask the maker of the hardware if they tested their Win 3.1 driver with Win95. If not, they probably have a Win95 driver for you. If no Win95 driver, do yourself a favor and dump the hardware for a Win95 compatible equivalent. Net card drivers for Windows for Workgroups won't work for sure, which is too bad, because those things got decent performance. ------------------------------ Subject: 14.3. How come (this old Win 3.1 driver) works? I thought it wasn't supposed to work! Then again, "nicely" written drivers that don't replace system components will work. Most of these include sound card drivers, though Win95 ignores any MIDIMAP.CFG files; it treats single MIDI devices as whole patch sets now. You can get MIDI Mapper functionality with Multimedia properties/MIDI and select "Custom instrument". These classes of Win 3.1 drivers could work smoothly with Win95, if you install them from Add New Hardware/Have Disk: * Sound card (Including the PC Speaker driver) * Printer (Except those that replace core system files or install dumb "Printing Systems") * DOS CD-ROM (Don't forget MSCDEX if you have to use these) * Net card (NDIS 2 and ODI drivers work with NDIS 3.1 protocols and clients) * Media Control (MCI) drivers and video CODECs Notice I wrote "Drivers". Don't install whole programs if they come with the drivers if you can avoid it; use Add New Hardware and have it point to the disk with the OEMSETUP.INF file. All other classes of Win 3.1 drivers you should avoid completely! ------------------------------ Subject: 14.4. Why shouldn't I run (this old Windows 3.1 program)? Avoid running these classes of Win 3.1 apps in Win95 for these reasons: * Communication (Tend to replace Win95 COMM.DRV and defeat TAPI) * Printing Systems (Waste of memory) * Virus checkers (Can misinterpret 32-bit components) * Disk utilities (Particularly undeleters and such that rely on real mode disk access) * Back up programs (No long filename support) ------------------------------ Subject: 14.5. Can I run Win95 on my '286 with 2 MB of RAM? (joke) Oh sure you can. Just get one of those Cyrix 486 processors for '286 system boards (hah hah) Seriously, Win95 will run on one of these things I suppose, with the 486 hack, about as well as it could on a 16-bit bus system with 4 MB memory... ------------------------------ Subject: 14.6. Can I run Win95 on my '386-SX with 4 MB of RAM? (a bit of a joke, but it does run) The same here I'm afraid. I tried it once. Never again. Win95 will display a "suggestion" in the System Performance tab if you only have 4 MB memory. Personally, they should've extended that suggestion for 8 MB machines too. ------------------------------ Subject: 14.7. Why do 32-bit programs seem slower than the original 16-bit ones? Microsoft's excuse to this is app writers are just learning how to write Win32 programs. This is probably right; you can't just take a C program optimized for Win 3.1 and throw a compiler switch. You have to make Win32 calls, switch your DOS calls to Win32 disk calls, use built in libraries and requesters instead of the home-made ones, and trim off the extra memory you'd allocate just to over-compensate. There's a lot of bad programming practice out there. I personally believe that all the ex-Amiga coders out there will take to Win95 the easiest, because we already know how to write tight code. Another good excuse is that programmers don't trust the OS and try to access hardware directly. Wrong. This not only forces a lot of excess bulk in the code, it has to fight with the OS to get to the hardware. Some really untrusting software houses (like Novell) will even include their own whole subsystems into the OS, rather than use what's already there. Bad move. Result: 4 MB network clients (compressed) compared to oh, 200 KB. Yet another excuse? Intel. The Pentium and '486 class processors were really optimized for 16-bit code. As much as Intel and Microsoft wanted to push programmers into using the extended instruction set of 32-bit processors, the programmers had a 16-bit OS to contend with, except for a privileged few coding for NetWare, OS/2, or NT. (OK maybe some UNIX people too) Hence the Pentium Pro's optimization towards 32-bit code. Of course all the cheap clone processors had to be fast running 16-bit code too. I also read something about Windows NT, where you can do something called "Working set tuning". This lets you re-organize the executable so the most frequently used code sits near the beginning of the executable, and the least used stuff goes near the end. This way, you don't need to have as much memory to run your app. Unfortunately, Win32s (and probably Win95) don't take advantage of this and they'll load all of the app in memory anyway, wasting it. The same 32-bit app running under NT will probably run faster than it would under Win95 because of this. Case in point: MS Word 7.0. This app runs much faster in NT 4.0 than in Win95. The new companies coming out tend to write cleaner and faster code that use the OS. Check out the shareware on www.windows95.com or any major FTP site. The old established firms will take a long time to switch over. Even in FEB 97 they haven't quite got it right yet. ------------------------------ Subject: 14.8. Why didn't Novell/WordPerfect/Corel (TM) release a 32-bit version of PerfectOffice (TM) yet? WordPerfect corp has a history of re-writing everything from scratch. WordPerfect 6.1 hardly used any built in calls in Win 3.1; they don't use the Common Dialog for file operations (which is why Norton's LFN enabler for Win95 doesn't work in it), they don't use Win 3.1 print functions (causing screwups if you leave EMF spooling enabled sometimes), and it becomes a monster in the process, with two patches so far for working in Win95. Corel just released their own versions of the WordPerfect Office programs for Win95. I haven't had a chance to look at it beyond the readme file, but that already scared me because of a notice that "This program does not run under Windows NT." I understand that Microsoft included a lot of the Win95 sub-system with MS Office 95 for NT users, but why could not Corel do the same? Other users told me the same thing... they can't even fool it into running. Sorry, Corel. For a Canadian software house I expected better. ------------------------------ Subject: 14.9. I want to get a Pentium Pro (TM) system, but isn't it slower running Win95 than a Pentium? I don't have the details on this, but the noise out there suggests a Pentium Pro runs 16 bit code slower than a Pentium does. Intel's optimized the 'Pro for 32-bit code, just like Microsoft's pushing 32-bit apps for the "Designed for Win95" logo. This is another sign that these two giants are trying to kill DOS. Yes, the 'Pro will run Win95's 16 bit components slower than a Pentium can. According to KB article Q122869, these components use 16-bit code: * Disk utilities (ScanDisk, Defrag, DriveSpace 2) * Games (The built in time-wasters, even Freecell is a 16-bit version here) * Win 3.1 compatibility stubs (like KRNL386, USER, GDI, all the .DRV files) * Win 3.1 components (WinChat, SYSEDIT, Program Manager, File Manager, WinVer) * The Win95 tour * DOS programs and COMMAND.COM, and the start up code which uses DOS If you use only Win32 programs, you won't touch the 16-bit code once Win95 is up. If you avoid DOS programs you won't use DOS for any hardware access. Yes it's slower than a Pentium for old crap, but it's faster than a Pentium for the new crap. ------------------------------ Subject: 14.10. Top ten reasons why Microsoft created Windows 95 (I can use some jokes here) 10. Microsoft had too many programmers doing nothing 9. Bill Gates had a vision from God 8. "Mac on PC! Mac on PC!" 7. Bill Gates wanted to celebrate their latest court victory over Apple with a bang 6. To sell more NT servers 5. To sell more NT workstations (Hence the Designed for Win95 requirements) 4. MS couldn't buy the source code to the Amiga OS (Though I bet they tried real hard) 3. OS/2 flopped, NT originally flopped, maybe third time lucky? 2. To bring PCs and users up to speed 1. To kill DOS dead ------------------------------ Subject: 14.11. Top ten things missing from Windows 95 10. A better performance monitor (the NT PerfMon is excellent compared to this P.O.S.) 9. A warning label not to install DOS drivers 8. Working set tuning capability (a'la Windows NT) 7. MS Plus 6. All the service updates in ONE PLACE (I haven't seen a Service Pack 2 yet!) 5. A voice mail client for Exchange 4. The Win 3.1 Macro Recorder! 3. More development time 2. More co-operation from beta-testers and developers! 1. More user understanding! OK? In other words, READ THE FAQ. ------------------------------ Subject: 14.12. Top ten answers to Microsoft's question: "Where do you want to go today?" 10) Work. 9) Hell. 8) The Win95NetBugs page to see where else Microsoft screwed up. 7) www.windows95.com for cool Win95 shareware 6) Disneyland. (TM) 5) The MS Knowledge Base because Win95 tech support's too busy 4) netwire.novell.com to get Client32 (I don't know why...) 3) Redmond, Washington, to assassinate William H. Gates. 2) The Jones's. They have a Mac. 1) Home, to eat Dinner ------------------------------ Subject: Rantings from yours truly: Back in 1985 I went ga-ga over the newly released Amiga by Commodore. All this cool hardware that was light-years beyond the faintest hopes of DOS box users with their 8-bit XTs and 16-bit '286 machines. The first true 32-bit system (Ok so it used a 16-bit 68000, but that 68000 was designed for 32-bit operation from day one, and the software was ALL 32-bit). I still have an Amiga with all the latest hardware and enjoy the old stuff (which still runs) and the new stuff I download from Aminet every other day. Now ten years later the DOS box industry finally catches up (while Commodore slept for ten years and eventually went bankrupt) and Microsoft, the undisputed industry leader, releases their answer. Of course they had to keep ten years of 8-bit compatibility (and DOS boxes will suck forever because of this) but the excitement was there; one I haven't felt really since 1985. Ok it was there for about two months with OS/2 2.0 but if you're visiting this page chances are you aren't using OS/2. I feel the excitement when I find a cool piece of shareware or some new software that really takes advantage. So it was a lame story, OK? But for the first time here's a computer system that is Mainstream and also Cool. Probably my next system will run NT when everyone writes cool 32-bit software, but until then Win95's here, and it's my job to support my boss's customers who use it. Hence the FAQ. I read too many stupid and lame questions on the newsgroups, and the same people insist on running CorelSCSI or some other old DOS crap because their hardware sucks without it. Well guess what? Your hardware just sucks even WITH CorelSCSI or whatever the old DOS software is. Replace it and get Win95 compatible stuff. That's the answer I keep telling everyone on the newsgroups, and I know it works because In-Line's customers do that and everything works. I also figure that if the stupid questions get answered quickly, In-Line's customers can call with more intelligent questions, which will usually take longer, and earn us more, and won't bore us to tears. Oh yes... regarding my blatant cross-posting of the FAQ. Like I explained in the very first page and in fact the very first question, FAQs are supposed to answer frequently asked questions, in order to reduce traffic on USENET. A minor surge of a 350 KB of text (which is what my FAQ totals to, incidentally) should prevent about 4 MB a day of useless questions. FAQs have nothing to do with the World Wide Web (with the exception of FAQs about the WWW itself) nor is it mandatory to post a FAQ on a web or FTP site. I was asked to post the FAQ to the standard FAQ repositories (being the archive at rtfm.mit.edu and news.answers and comp.answers) so anyone without WWW or FTP access could get them. So I have. And all I get is sh*t from a couple of salesmen telling me not to pollute USENET. Yeah right; they probably just don't want me taking what little business they have. Poor them; they must go crazy answering stupid questions. I know I do. And yeah... how about those advertisers and their fakeware? I hope everyone out there reading this FAQ are as excited about this new stuff as I am. Despite all the hype, hoopla, and bullsh*t, this has finally turned Personal Computers upside-down. -- ============================================================================== = I am Gordon of Winterpeg. Junk mail is futile. Post MakeMoneyFast = = Find out why: http://spam.abuse.net/spam/ Or eat pink meat from a can = = World's best computer: http://www.amiga.de/ they're both the same = = Windows 95 FAQ: http://www.orca.bc.ca/win95/ http://ga.to/mmf/ = ==============================================================================