37.3 Windows for Workgroups

37.3 Windows for Workgroups

37.3.1 Latest TCP/IP Stack from Microsoft

Use the latest TCP/IP stack from Microsoft if you use Windows for Workgroups. The early TCP/IP stacks had lots of bugs .

Microsoft has released an incremental upgrade to their TCP/IP 32-bit VxD drivers. The latest release can be found on their ftp site at ftp.microsoft.com, located in /peropsys/windows/public/tcpip/wfwt32.exe . There is an update.txt file there that describes the problems that were fixed. New files include WINSOCK.DLL , TELNET.EXE , WSOCK.386 , VNBT.386 , WSTCP.386 , TRACERT.EXE , NETSTAT.EXE , and NBTSTAT.EXE .

37.3.2 Delete .pwl Files After Password Change

Windows for Workgroups does a lousy job with passwords. When you change passwords on either the UNIX box or the PC, the safest thing to do is to delete the .pwl files in the Windows directory. The PC will complain about not finding the files, but will soon get over it, allowing you to enter the new password.

If you do not do this, you may find that Windows for Workgroups remembers and uses the old password, even if you told it a new one.

Often Windows for Workgroups will totally ignore a password you give it in a dialog box.

37.3.3 Configuring Windows for Workgroups Password Handling

There is a program call admincfg.exe on the last disk (disk 8) of the WFW 3.11 disk set. To install it, type EXPAND A:\ADMINCFG.EX_ C:\WINDOWS\ADMINCFG.EXE . Then add an icon for it via the Program Manager New Menu. This program allows you to control how WFW handles passwords, i.e., Disable Password Caching and so on. for use with security = user .

37.3.4 Password Case Sensitivity

Windows for Workgroups uppercases the password before sending it to the server. UNIX passwords can be case-sensitive though. Check the smb.conf information on password level to specify what characters Samba should try to uppercase when checking.

37.3.5 Use TCP/IP as Default Protocol

To support print queue reporting, you may find that you have to use TCP/IP as the default protocol under Windows for Workgroups. For some reason, if you leave NetBEUI as the default, it may break the print queue reporting on some systems. It is presumably a Windows for Workgroups bug.

37.3.6 Speed Improvement

Note that some people have found that setting DefaultRcvWindow in the [MSTCP] section of the SYSTEM.INI file under Windows for Workgroups to 3072 gives a big improvement.

My own experience with DefaultRcvWindow is that I get a much better performance with a large value (16384 or larger). Other people have reported that anything over 3072 slows things down enormously. One person even reported a speed drop of a factor of 30 when he went from 3072 to 8192.