Enter Network Password!!!

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Hi

I'm hoping someone might be able to solve a problem for me!

I've just set up a simple ethernet network between two PCs, one running Windows XP (attached to the internet via a cable modem) and one running Windows 98SE. I was hoping to be able to share files, printer etc and the internet connection, but I can't get it to work properly. I used the Network Setup Wizard on the XP machine and then used the floppy it created to set up the 98 machine, so far so good..... Both PCs can "see" each other, as they both show up in their Network Places equivalents. I can ping each PC from the other and I can access and send files to the 98 PC from the XP PC, but I can't access the XP PC from the 98 one. (If that makes sense!)

Within Network Neighborhood on the 98 PC, I can see the icon for the XP PC, but when I double-click it I get an "Enter Network Password" message. But I haven't even set a password up, so I can't enter it because I don't know what it is!! Furthermore, I can't connect to the internet with the 98 PC.

I am pretty sure that these problems are nothing to do with my firewall (ZoneAlarm Security Suite) as I've tried disabling it, to no avail.

Please help. There may be a simple solution, but I can't find it even after numerous Googles.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

 

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Hi from what I know the reason you are getting this message box is because XP is more secure than 98 in terms of sharing files... it is asking you to authenticate as a user of the XP machine (Thereby denying anyone who does not have a user account on the XP machine to access its resources, which does make sense)

Check this out

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/wxpwin9x.html

EDIT:

Just digged out as to why what you are trying to do is not possible. Windows XP by default when you share a folder sets the share permission to Read Only for the group Everyone. However, and this is where it differs to Windows 98, the Everyone group does not include anonymous login, i.e. anyone logging in... hence the login box

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308418&sd=tech

I think!

As for the internet, to be honest those network setup disks are awful, start ics on the xp machine then make your 98 machine 192.168.0.2 and put the gateway and dns 192.168.0.1 (xp machine address)

 

Have you set up a workgroup and created accounts on both machines?

Create the shares fior the folders you want shared out, give permissions to the account(s) you created on both machines.

If the XP machine is formatted with NTFS you won't be able to see the HD from the 98 machine.

As for ICS- I'm not too sure about that although if you've got the windows firewall on the XP machine make sure file and printer sharing is selected in the exceptions tab.

 

I do not believe that to be true. That is only true if you physically attach the drive to the Windows 98 machine because it does not know NTFS.

On a sharing point of view, they both use the SMB protocol, which is why they can communicate....

 

^what he said^

 

Agree totally with this. Don't know anything about ICS though, sorry!

 

I always thought that a Win 98 machine could not see an NTFS partition whether it was in the same disk, on another disk in the same machine or across the network.

I've never seen a 98/95 machine that can access an NTFS drive, have they changed this recently?

 

You need to separate these cases. When it is on a local machine then Win98 needs NTFS drivers to access that disk. As Win98 doesn't ship with such drivers you usualy can't do this. However, there are such drivers about, and when loaded allow access.

When the drive is remote the file system is 'hidden' by the network protocol. Usualy this protocol is part of Windows Networking. As all versions of windows understand windows networking there is no problem accessing such a drive remotely.

No - it has always been the case.

There *can* be problems with permissions, and sometimes problems where the local OS, if it is an old one, gets confused by very big partitions and files. But access has always been possible.

Other file systems can be accessed as well using this same technique. One of my work boxes, running Win2k, has a remote drive which is actualy formatted as ufs. The networking system takes care of the differences.

Harry.

 

Thanks for your help, guys. Jellyman, that windowsnetworking link was spot on. I had to create a user account on XP for the 98 system.

As far as ICS is concerned, that has been a nightmare trying to sort out. I've been scouring the Web for over two days and I finally found an answer in the Zone Labs user forums. If anyone is interested, and if you even use ZoneAlarm, I just simply had to add the DNS server to the Trusted Zone.

Everything is working great now.

 

While I Harry answered this very well, and is absolutely correct, I'd like to sort of restate his post.

The Win98 machine is not reading the ntfs disk. The XP machine is reading the disk, translating the data on ntfs formatted disk to the smb protocol and sending the data to the Win98 machine in the smb protocol. Thus the Win98 machine never even sees what the disk format is.

This is also why you can set up a Samba file server on a Linux machine using ReisersFS, ext2, ext3, or any one of a few other disk formats that Windows does not natively read and a Windows user can can read and write to those drives without adding the drivers for those file systems to the Windows machine.

 

Glad it is working well for you now.

A lot of people miss the fact that in order to share resources between PCs in a *Windows Workgroup* i.e. peer to peer and not a domain environment. It is necessary for both PCs to have the same workgroup name. You can re-name the default to whatever you like but they must be the same. Secondly you have to have user accounts that match on both machines, and they *must* have passwords configured that match as well. It is the username and password combination that is checked when granting access to shares/printers over a network.

As many users do not set passwords on their accounts, they have issues when trying to share resources.

I would always recommend people to set an unguessable password for their account. It is the first step in securing your system, especially if your account has admin privileges!!

 

Er - cough - this bit isn't true. Workgroups are simply a way of grouping machines. In the workgroup world all machine names are in the same flat namespace. (See Meyers Network+ book).

Yesterday I tested accessing WinXP from a Win98SE box before writing about this on this forum. Those two boxes happen to be in different workgroups. It made no difference!

Now *account* names are a different thing!

Harry.

 

Couple of questions about this:

How are you accessing the XP machine from the 98? You just browsing network neighbourhood and there it is (shares and permissions and accounts set up correctly of course)?

Is the XP machine XP home or pro and what's the firewall setting?

I remember a project I was involved in a few years ago where we put in a new SBS server for this small company and rolled them all out Win2k workstations. When we booted up the server none of the 98 machines could access the data shares, the Win2k ones had no problems mapping the drives in their login scripts and accessing the data on the NTFS partitioned server.

My immediate reaction was to bump all the 98 users (about 80% of them) to the front of the rollout queue- that was one hell of a morning...

While reading my course book for 70-270 it's mentioned NTFS v5 which is why I asked if anything had changed.

 

Pete - I may be wrong here - but doesn't SBS imply a domain? If so then all the preceeding about Workgroups goes out of the window.

With a domain there are all sorts of subtle things about the authentication etc which can play merry hell with Win9x stuff.

Harry.

 

Yes there was an AD domain set up- you're not wrong... but Win 98 clients can join a domain. They were joined to the domain (not via the client setup disks from SBS) and quite happily talking to Exchange- sending and receiving emails they just couldn't see the network shares at all.


I know it's not best practice to have Win 9x clients on an NT/AD network it's one of those things that on paper *should* work but just never does quite.

 

The snag is that there has been a shift in how domain authentication is handled in the windows server world. Win2k had both the legacy system and the new Kerberos-based system. By *default* (I believe) Win2k used the new system, but could be switched to the old.

Win9x - out of the box, will only work correctly with the old system - hence the incompatability.

We have hit this one at work recently. We have changed from Win2k, with the old system enabled, to Win2003, which doesn't have this at all (I'm told). Win9x and old NT4 won't properly work with this, so we had to replace some old systems.

There is a driver download for older systems which is supposed to help deal with the problem - but I decided it was a good moment to force a machine upgrade, which was otherwise not forthcoming!

Harry.

 

Well I must admit I have never tried it, as I was led to believe it was necessary. However, if you say it's not that is good enough for me Funnily enough, workgroups were hardly touched upon throughout my MCSE studies. The domain model was always the focus, which probably explains why I hate peer to peer so much

 

I know what you mean. As domains are so important they tend to be the focus of docs.

There are lots of instances of the statement that 'workgroups must match' all over the 'net, but only a few taking the opposite view.

I base my observation on the following:
Each year a group of enthusiasts converge on an old hotel in Dorset for a weekend of food, alcohol, talks etc and we take our machines.
For many years I have helped setup a network of these machines, and there are a large range of Workgroup names. For all this time there have been no difficulties 'seeing' shared drives on other machines, even though the mix of OSes was fairly extreme.
Now it is mostly XP - Home and Pro, but we have been doing this since Win3.11 days! We have *never* had problems with needing to change Workgroups.

Harry.

 

I do believe you Harry, and I am sure it will save me a few minutes here and there changing workgroup names for no reason

Here is a link that covers what you said about joining legacy operating systems to Server 2003 domains. I can now see why it isn't worth the hassle

How to enable Windows 98/ME/NT clients to logon to Windows 2003 based Domains