Configuring Windows95 as Client to a Unix (SAMBA) Server

This document assumes that you are installing on a machine which does NOT have a plug-n-play (PNP) motherboard. A considerably simpler procedure would suffice if you had PNP.

The basic difficulty seems to be that win95 auto-detects the presence of the 3Com 3c509 EtherLink III board, which has PNP support, and thereby assumes that the system has PNP. The overall strategy is to get win95 up far enough that you can de-configure the PNP support, and then go through the tedium of configuring the networking.

This procedure was performed using the OEM version of Windows 95, "4.00.950 B".

Network Configuration

  1. Perform a normal installation of Windows95 without network support. Leave the Windows 95 CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive for the duration of this procedure.
  2. Allow win95 to reboot to complete it's setup.
  3. It seems you'll have to specify the hostname, workgroup name, and your system description to get past this. (Can you cancel out of this?)
  4. You'll have to set the timezone.
  5. You'll have to cancel out of the printer setup.
  6. You'll have to restart the system again.
  7. At this point, a "Windows Networking" pop-up will appear, saying
    Your network adaptor 3Com EtherLink III ISA (3C509b-Combo) in PnP mode (0000) is not working properly. You may need to set it up again. For more information, see the network Troubleshooter in Windows Help.
    Sigh, and click OK.
  8. An "Enter Windows Password" pop-up will appear. Click cancel.
  9. The desktop will appear, along with a "Welcome" pop-up. Close it.
  10. Double-click on "My Computer". Double-click on "Control Panel". Double-click on "System". Select the "Device Manager" tab. Note how the 3Com ethernet has a yellow "!" on it, indicating it is broken.
  11. Click on the "+" next to "System devices". Click on "IO read data port for ISA Plug and Play enumerator". It will turn blue. Click on "Remove". A "Confirm Device Removal" pop-up will appear, click on "OK". The disk will rattle. The "System devices" item will shrink again.
  12. Click on the "+" next to "System devices". Click on "ISA Plug and Play bus". It will turn blue. Click on "Remove". A "Confirm Device Removal" pop-up will appear, click on "OK". The disk will rattle. The "System devices" item will shrink again. The 3Com ethernet line should vanish too.
  13. Click on "Close".
  14. Double-click on "Network" in the Control Panel. A "Network" pop-up will appear. Click on "Add...".
  15. In the "Select Network Component Type" pop-up, double-click on "Adapter".
  16. In the "Select Network adapters" pop-up, select the proper device. In my case, click on "3Com" in the "Manufacturers" column to make it turn blue, then click on "3Com EtherLink III ISA (3C509/3C509b) in ISA mode" to make that turn blue. Click on OK.
  17. The "Select Network adapters pop-up will vanish, win95 will think for a minute, then the "Select Network Component Type" pop-up will vanish, revealing the "Network" pop-up, which will have five (5) network components installed: 
    Client for Microsoft Networks
Client for NetWare Networks
3Com EtherLink III ISA (3C509/3C509b) in ISA mode
IPX/SPX-compatible Protocol
NetBEUI
  18. Click on "Client for NetWare Networks" to make it turn blue, then click on "Remove".
  19. Click on "Add...".
  20. In the "Select Network Component Type" pop-up, double-click on "Protocol".
  21. In the "Select Network Protocol" pop-up, click on "Microsoft" under "Manufacturers" to make it turn blue, then click on "TCP/IP" under "Network Protocols" to make that turn blue. Click OK.
  23. The "Select Network adapters pop-up will vanish, win95 will think for a minute, then the "Select Network Component Type" pop-up will vanish, revealing the "Network" pop-up, which will have five (5) network components installed: 
    Client for Microsoft Networks
3Com EtherLink III ISA (3C509/3C509b) in ISA mode
IPX/SPX-compatible Protocol
NetBEUI
TCP/IP
  24. Delete NetBEUI and IPX at this stage too.... Click on "IPX/SPX-compatible Protocol" to make it turn blue, click on "Remove". Click on "NetBEUI" to make it turn blue, click on "Remove".
  25. "Primary Network Logon" will have been set to "Client for Microsoft Networks". Leave it that way. (The other choice is "Windows Logon", which will result in your password being stored locally).
  26. (Under Access Control, Share-level access control is left selected.)
  27. Click OK.
  28. The "Network" pop-up will vanish, to be replaced by a "3Com EtherLink III ISA (3C509/3C509b) in ISA mode..." pop-up with a "Resources" tab showing. Change the "I/O address range" to the proper value (usually 300-30F). Leave the "Configuration type" at "Basic Configuration 0". Click OK.
  29. The window will close, and a "Copying Files" pop-up will appear, slurping more stuff off your Windows 95 CD-ROM. This will take several minutes.
  30. A "System Settings Change" pop-up will appear, saying
    You must restart your computer before the new settings will take effect. Do you want to restart your computer now?
    Click on "Yes".
  31. Windows95 will shut down, your BIOS will say hello, then Windows95 will start up again.
  32. At this point, a "Windows Networking" pop-up will appear, saying
    Your network adaptor 3Com EtherLink III ISA (3C509b-Combo) in ISA mode (0000) is not working properly. You may need to set it up again. For more information, see the network Troubleshooter in Windows Help.
    Sigh, and click OK.
  33. An "Enter Windows Password" pop-up will appear. Click cancel.
  34. A "Start Menu Shortcuts" pop-up will appear, then vanish.
  35. The desktop will appear, along with a "Welcome" pop-up. Close it.
  36. The "Control Panel" should be visible.
  37. Go to the "Start" menu, highlight "Shutdown" and click on it. A "Shut Down Windows" pop-up will appear. The radio-button marked "Shut down the computer?" will be pressed, this is correct. Click "Yes".
  38. Windows will shut down. Press reset. Windows will come up.
  39. You will get a "DHCP Client" pop-up, saying
    This DHCP client was unable to obtain an IP network address from a DHCP server. Do you want to see future DHCP messages?
    Click "Yes".
  40. An "Enter Windows Password" pop-up will appear. Click cancel.
  41. The desktop will appear. The "Control Panel" should be visible. Double-click on "System". The "Network adapters" entry should be free of a yellow "!". Click "Cancel".
  42. Double-click on "Network". A "Network" pop-up will appear. Click on "TCP/IP" to make it blue. Click on "Properties".
  43. A "TCP/IP Properties" pop-up will appear, with 7 tabs. The exposed tab will be "IP Address". Click on the radio-button marked "Specify an IP address".
  44. Point the mouse into the IP address area and click once. Enter your IP address, with each number separated by a period (dot). DO NOT HIT ENTER! Instead, press TAB, then type in your subnet mask. DO NOT HIT ENTER AFTER THAT, either, or it will dismiss the entire pop-up, not just this tab! (Example: wiggle is 128.63.32.120, subnet mask 255.255.255.0).
  45. In the "NetBIOS" tab, the "I want to enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP" selection is greyed out, but checked. Leave this alone.
  46. In the "WINS Configuration" tab, the "Disable WINS Resolution" radio-button is pressed. Leave this alone.
  47. In the "Advanced" tab, click to check off the "Set this protocol to be the default protocol" box.
  48. In the "Gateway" tab, the cursor will be blinking in the "New gateway" box. Type in the IP address of your network's gateway. DO NOT PRESS ENTER! Instead, click on "Add". (At ARL, the gateway will always be host 1 (one) on every subnet. example: 128.63.32.1).
  49. In the "Bindings" tab, "Client for Microsoft Networks" should be checked and no other entries should be listed. Leave it this way.
  50. In the "DNS Configuration" tab, click on the "Enable DNS" radio-button. Put the cursor in the "Host" box and click the mouse. Enter the host part of your hostname in the "Host" box. DO NOT HIT ENTER! Press TAB, enter the domain part of your hostname in the "Domain" box. DO NOT HIT ENTER! Press TAB, enter the IP address of a DNS server. At ARL a good choice is ns1.arl.army.mil, 128.63.16.4; if this PC is joining the VAPOR workgroup, you could use one of VAPOR's IP address, at 128.63.xxx.80. (Example: wiggle TAB arl.army.mil TAB 128.63.16.4) Click on "Add".
  51. Review the tabs for correctness, then (finally) click on "OK". The "TCP/IP Properties" pop-up will vanish, revealing the "Network" pop-up. Click on "OK".
  52. A "System Settings Change" pop-up will appear, saying
    You must restart your computer before the new settings will take effect. Do you want to restart your computer now?
    Click on "Yes". Windows seems to do this a lot, doesn't it?
  53. Windows95 will shut down, your BIOS will say hello, then Windows95 will start up again.
  54. An "Enter Windows Password" pop-up will appear. Click cancel.
  55. With luck, your machine is up on the network now. Click on the "Start" menu, go up to "Programs", pull right, go down to "MS-DOS Prompt", and click on it.
  56. An "MS-DOS Prompt" window will open. Put your cursor inside the window. Type "ping 128.63.32.1" and ENTER, substituting the IP address of your local gateway. If all is well, you will see: 
    C:\WINDOWS>ping 128.63.32.1

Pinging 128.63.32.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 128.63.32.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=255
Reply from 128.63.32.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=255
Reply from 128.63.32.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=255
Reply from 128.63.32.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=255

C:\WINDOWS>
    If there is a problem, you will see: 
    C:\WINDOWS>ping 128.63.32.1

Pinging 128.63.32.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

C:\WINDOWS>
  57. At this point, other interesting commands to try are: 
    netstat -e
ftp
    You can also run "telnet", but be prepared for it to open it's own telnet window.
  58. Type "exit" to close the "MS-DOS Prompt" window.
  59. To test the connection to the SAMBA server, we need to log off and log in.
  60. Go to the "Start" menu, highlight "Shutdown" and click on it. A "Shut Down Windows" pop-up will appear. The radio-button marked "Shut down the computer?" will be pressed, instead, press the "Close all programs and log on as a different user?" button. Then click "Yes".
  61. An "Enter Network Password" pop-up will appear. Enter your username as you would give it to the UNIX fileserver. DO NOT PRESS ENTER! Instead, press TAB, and type in your SecureID code, or the password in force on the server you plan on accessing. Then press ENTER or click on "OK".
  62. A "Set Windows Password" pop-up will appear. DO NOT LET WINDOWS STASH YOUR PASSWORD! This will cause you no end of grief later. Instead, click on "Cancel". The pop-up will vanish, and you are logged on.
  63. To test your access to the fileserver, Click on the "Start" menu, go up to "Programs", pull right, go down to "Windows Explorer", and click on it. (Note that "Windows Explorer" is the file manager, it is not "Microsoft InterNet Explorer", the Web browser. Confusing terminology.)
  64. An "Exploring - label (C:)" window will open. Click on the "Tools" menu item, and click on "Map Network Drive...".
  65. A "Map Network Drive" pop-up will open. The "Drive" field will be highlighted in blue, and probably defaulting to "D:". Type "T:" and a TAB. In the "Path" field, enter "\\vapor\tmp" (without the quotation marks). DO NOT PRESS ENTER! Instead, click on "Reconnect at Logon", and then click "OK". The pop-up will close.
  66. In the left half of the "Exploring - label (C:)" window (titled "All Folders"), in the section below "My Computer", you should see an icon of a disk drive with a white network pipe passing below it, with the legend "Tmp on 'Vapor' (T:)". Double-click on that icon, and the right half of the window (titled "Contents of 'Tmp of 'Vapor' (T:)'") should display the contents of vapor.arl.army.mil:/var/tmp.
  67. Repeat the procedure, to mount as "V:" \\vapor\root
  68. Repeat the procedure, to mount as "H:" \\vapor\mike (where you substitute your UNIX username for "mike").
  69. You should now have access to your home directory as H:, to a huge temporary disk at T:, and to the publicly-visible directories of your colleagues on the file server as V: (for vapor.arl.army.mil). For SLAD, these would usually be found under V:\vld. I suggest you use other drive letters for other servers, to allow multiple servers to be mapped simultaneously. Also note that you can reach through the NFS mounts under the servers /n directory, so that "v:\n\wolf\d\mike" would be my home directory on wolf.
  70. To make visible the "hidden" directory items, click on the "View" menu item, and click on "Options...". An "Options" pop-up will open, with two tabs. In the "View" tab, click on the radio-button "Show all files". You might also want to un-check the "Hide MS-DOS file extensions for file types that are registered" checkbox. Click OK.
  71. If that doesn't work, additional information might be gleaned from the command-line interface. Click on the "Start" menu, go up to "Programs", pull right, go down to "MS-DOS Prompt", and click on it. An "MS-DOS Prompt" window will open. Put your cursor inside the window. Type "net use t: \\vapor\tmp" and ENTER, and see what it says. If the operation is successful, try running "dir t:".

Normal Login

From now on, when you are finished using your computer, you should either shut it down, or log out, leaving behind the "Enter Network Password" pop-up.

Enter your username as you would give it to the UNIX fileserver. DO NOT PRESS ENTER! Instead, press TAB, and type in your SecureID code, or the password in force on the server you plan on accessing. Then press ENTER or click on "OK".

A "Set Windows Password" pop-up will appear. DO NOT LET WINDOWS STASH YOUR PASSWORD! This will cause you no end of grief later. Instead, click on "Cancel". The pop-up will vanish, and you are logged on. All your network devices (T:, H:, V:) should be immediately available.

If you encounter problems logging in, just click "Cancel", and you can operate locally.

Configuring Internet Explorer

  1. Drag the "Set up Microsoft Network" icon into the trash. Similarly for the online services icon. If you're ethernet connected at the office, no need for this stuff.
  2. Double-click on the globe icon titled "The Internet". An "Internet Connection Wizard" window will pop-up. Select "Current", and click on "Next". The disk will rattle, the wizard pop-up will close, and an "InterNet Explorer" window will open.
  3. About the first thing you'll see is an "Authenticode(tm) Security Technology" pop-up offering an Authenticode 2.0 Update. Click "Yes". There will be an "Authenticode 2.0" pop-up, and then some sheets of paper will fly from one folder icon to the other. If the connection is interrupted for any reason (it usually is), select the LAST of the "Microsoft" sites for the "auth2all.exe" file; click on that link.
  4. An "InterNet Explorer" pop-up will ask about this download. In this case, since it's coming from Microsoft, click the "Open it" radio-button and click OK. There will be some more pop-ups to click OK, and then, naturally, windows will need to be rebooted. You will get a "Microsoft Authenticode v2 Update" pop-up asking
    You must restart your computer before the new settings will take effect. Do you want to restart your computer now?
    Click Yes.
  5. Once windows has rebooted, log in normally, as outlined above.
  6. The version of InterNet Explorer on the CD-ROM is undoubtably out of date. Double-click on "The Internet". At the bottom left of the page (page down several times), you'll see a "FREE Microsoft InterNet Explorer" icon with an E/globe animation. Click on it.
  7. You'll be asked if you want to install a bunch of extensions. Might as well click Yes to each, or the Microsoft home pages won't work. When it's all installed, under the bold word "Explorer", click on "Download" with the red triangle underneath it. A menu will pop up. Select "Internet Explorer 128-bit Version". Read down the page, and click the red "DOWNLOAD" box. On the next page your host name and IP address will be displayed. Click "Next".
  8. On the next page you'll be asked for name and mailing address. On the page after that, you'll be given a choice of products. Finally, you'll be downloading the software. Check the radiobutton to allow the download to be "opened".
  9. After a good while, you'll probabl get a "Version Conflict" pop-up. Keep your existing file by clicking "OK".
  10. Naturally, Windows 95 can't even install a simple program without needing to be rebooted, so when the "Microsoft Internet Explorer Setup" pop-up appears saying
    You must restart your computer before the new settings will take effect. Do you want to restart your computer now?
    click on Yes.

Improving Display Quality

Your video card might be able to display more pixels, or better color resolution (wider pixels), than the default setting that Windows 95 selects. Double click on "My Computer", "Control Panel", "Display". A "Display Properties" window will open, with four tabs. In the "Settings" tab, under "Color palette", attempt to select "High Color (16 bit)". In the "Desktop area" slider, you might try to increase the resolution of the screen, too. Then click "Apply".

A "Compatibility Warning" pop-up will appear, saying

The settings you have chosen may cause some programs to operate improperly if you do not restart your computer now. Would you like to:
(*) Restart the computer with the new settings?
Click OK, and watch your computer reboot again.

Network Neighborhood

As things stand at this point, the network neighborhood can't be browsed. Gets an "Entire Network" pop-up.

Unable to browse the network. The newtork is not accessible. For more information, look in the Help Index at the topic "Network Troubleshooting".

My computer | Control panel | Network (Configuration): Select "TCP/IP", click Properties. Change to "Enable WINS Resolution". Add 128.63.32.80 (vapor) as primary server. Click OK, OK. "Building driver information database."

"System settings change". Naturally, windows needs to reboot again.

< mike@arl.army.mil >
Up | Prev | Next