Send us your tips and questions. You can also visit Bob Chronister's
online Tricks & Traps at http://www.winntmag.com/forums/index.html.
Q: In January, you mentioned that you don't recommend dual booting between
Windows NT and Windows 95. I've installed NT and Win95 on two separate physical
drives in my 166MHz Pentium and have had no problems. What problems have you
encountered, and do you advise sticking with one operating system?
First, let me set the record straight for readers who tell me that NT and
Win95 coexist perfectly--you can install both operating systems on the same
system. However, each OS uses different component files, and Win95 can ruin NT
if you use the Win95 Fdisk or the DOS or Win95 Defrag utility, (which, I admit,
people don't do very often, but it does happen). Delete the Win95 version of
Fdisk and use NT Disk Administrator or the DOS Fdisk. I use NTFS as much as
possible, which makes dual booting the same files impossible. To be honest, I
have a dedicated Win95 machine on my network that I use for diagnostic purposes
and a Windows for Workgroups (WFW) machine that has a dual-boot option to NT 4.0
Workstation.
Rumor has it that NT 5.0 will not support FAT32. The implications of this
decision are enormous. FAT16 is dead and will soon be buried. The latest version
of Win95 (OEM Service Release 2) includes a FAT32 file system option that most
users have adopted to keep cluster size manageable. If the rumor mill is
correct, dual booting will soon be a thing of the past.
Q: How can I get Windows NT 4.0 to keep Num Lock on after reboot? This
problem is annoying many of my users.
This question involves changing your Registry--remember, always have a
backup of your Registry before you edit it. Warning: Using the Registry
editor incorrectly can cause serious, systemwide problems. You may have to
reinstall NT to correct them. Use this tool at your own risk.
Using regedt32.exe or regedit.exe, go to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control
Panel\Keyboard key. If you set the value for InitialKeyboardIndicators of data
type REG_SZ to 0, the Num Lock will turn off after the user logs on. If you set
the value for InitialKeyboardIndicators of data type REG_SZ to 2, the Num Lock
will turn on after the user logs on.
Q: How do I set up Dial-Up Networking (DUN) in Windows NT 4.0 to connect
to my Internet Service Provider (ISP)? Setting up DUN in NT 4.0 seems far
different from setting up Remote Access Service (RAS) in NT 3.51.
NT 4.0's DUN is similar to NT 3.51's RAS, but these similarities are not
necessarily obvious. To set up DUN in NT 4.0, follow these instructions:
- Double-click My Computer on your desktop, and select the Dial-Up
Networking icon.
- Click Install. You will see the message, "Installing Dial-Up
Networking."
-
If you have not previously installed a modem, NT will display the
message, "There are no RAS capable devices to Add. Do you want RAS setup to
invoke the modem installer to enable you to add a modem? Yes/No?"
- Click Yes. Before you continue, make sure your modem is attached to your
computer and turned on, and quit any programs that are using your modem. Click
Next when you are ready to continue.
- NT will try to automatically detect your modem and display the name of
any modem it finds. If NT doesn't automatically detect your modem, you can
manually browse the list of supported modems and select one to install. (As in
Windows 95, NT's auto-detect doesn't always work; I generally select my modem
from the list by hand.) You might need to insert the manufacturer-supplied modem
setup floppy if NT doesn't include the driver for your modem. Because NT (like
Win95) detects modems via unimodem, most setup floppies will have the needed
.inf file. If NT detects your modem, you will see an Install New Modem dialog
box that lists the name of your modem and the serial port where NT found your
modem.
- Click Next to confirm that the proper modem is selected.
- You then have to select your country, type in your three-digit area code,
specify whether you dial a number (such as 9) to access an outside telephone
line, and select tone (if you have a touch-tone phone) or pulse dialing. After
you finish configuring these settings, click Next.
- Click Finish. NT will display an Add RAS Device dialog box that lists any
RAS-capable devices.
- Click OK. The Remote Access Setup will list your modem in the listbox
with Port, Device, and Type information. Confirm that the setup is showing the
proper serial port and the correct type of modem.
- Click Configure, select Dial-Out Only (this setting might be set to In
and Out), and click OK.
- Click Network. Select the Dial-Out Protocol TCP/IP check box. Uncheck
NetBEUI and IPX if you are trying to establish a dial-up connection to an ISP.
- Click Continue in the Remote Access Setup dialog box. You will see the
message, "Please wait while Remote Access is installed." When the
setup prompts you, click Restart (rebooting is still a royal pain that Microsoft
will, I hope, fix soon).
- When your computer reboots, press Ctrl+Alt+Del and log on as
Administrator.
To connect to an ISP, you need to set up a phonebook entry. Follow these
steps:
- Double-click My Computer, and select the Dial-Up Networking icon.
- Click Install, click OK to add a new phonebook entry, and click OK again.
- When the New Phonebook Entry Wizard appears and displays the name of your
dial-up entry, type in the name of your remote access provider and click Next.
- In the Server dialog box, check I am calling the Internet, check
Send my plain text password if that's the only way to connect, and check
The non-Windows NT server I am calling expects me to type login information
after connect.
- Click Next, and enter the appropriate phone number.
- Click Next, and select Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP).
- Click Next, and select Use a Terminal Window. If your ISP supports logon
via Password Authentication Protocol (PAP) or Challenge Handshake Authentication
Protocol (CHAP) authentication, select None. If your ISP supplied you with an NT
or Win95 logon script, select the name of the script file in the Automate
with this script window (this file must be in the \%system%\system32\ras
directory). To connect to CompuServe, select the Automate this with a Script
check box (the script is cis.scp).
- Click Next. In the IP Address dialog box, enter your IP address if you
use a fixed IP address for your dial-up connection. Warning: Do not use
the same IP address as the one you assigned to the NIC in your machine. Leave
the IP address set to 0.0.0.0 if your remote access server assigns dynamic IP
addresses.
- Click Next. In the Name Server Addresses dialog box, enter the IP address
for your primary Domain Name System (DNS). For CompuServe, set the DNS to
149.174.211.5. For most ISPs, simply set server-assigned IP address and
server-assigned name-server addresses.
- Click Next, and click Finish to complete and save your dial-up phonebook
entry.
- Click More, and select Edit entry and modem properties. Confirm
that you have the proper settings for each DUN configuration dialog box.
- Click More again, and select Clone entry and modem properties,
as you see in Screen 1. Type in a new name for the clone entry, as you see in
Screen 2 (this step lets you start over easily in case your original entry
becomes corrupted).
- Create a shortcut on your desktop. Double-click My Computer on your
desktop, select the Dial-Up Networking icon, click More, and select Create
shortcut to entry. Click OK.
You are now ready to dial in to your ISP. Follow these steps:
- Click Dial to dial your remote access server.
- Type in your username and password. Make sure you leave the domain name
blank if you are dialing in to a non-NT network.
If you are connecting to the Microsoft Network (MSN), you must type MSN/USERNAMEfor the username. Furthermore, if you are running Service Pack 2 (SP2), you
need the postfix for RAS on the Microsoft FTP site (for more about this problem
and Microsoft's hotfix, see Jonathan Chau, "Service Pack 2," March
1997).
- Click OK. The modem will connect to your ISP's RAS server.
The Post-Dial Terminal Screen will appear. Use your ISP-supplied manual
terminal logon procedure to log on to your ISP, and click Done. Check the Do
not display this message again check box (the Close on dial option
hides the phonebook while dialing is occurring and closes it as soon as you
connect).
- Click OK. Right-click Dial-Up Networking Monitor on the task bar, and
select Open Dial-Up Monitor. You will see a DUN status screen. If you click
Details, the display you see in Screen 3 will appear.
- Click the Preferences tab, and review the information about your active
dial-up connection. When you finish your online activity, you can easily see the
status of the connection by looking at the DUN monitor in the system tray.
You can create a script to automate these connection steps. Create a new
text file, ispname.scp. Look at sample files pppmenu.scp and script.doc in the
\%systemroot%\system32\ras directory for examples.
If you connect to CompuServe and use WinCim 3.x, you'll want to pay
attention to these steps:
- In the Access, Preferences menu, select Default WINSOCK, as you see in
Screen 4. In the Advanced Settings, set the Host Machine Interface (HMI) timeout
to 240.
- To connect to CompuServe, use DUN and the detailed settings you see in
Screen 5.
- You can now run either WinCim or a standard Internet Browser.
To log on to CompuServe, I use the following script, which is part of my
switch.inf script file (for information about RAS scripts, see Steve Scoggins, "Windows
NT RAS Scripting," May 1996):
[Compuserve]
COMMAND=<cr>
OK=<match>":"
COMMAND=<cr>
COMMAND=CIS<cr>
OK=<match>":"
COMMAND=ID/GO:PPPCONNECT<cr>
OK=<match>":"
COMMAND=Password<cr>
OK=<ignore>
;end
[OtherISP]
COMMAND=
OK=<match>"login:"
LOOP=<ignore>
COMMAND=Your Id<cr>
OK=<match>"password:"
LOOP=<ignore>
COMMAND=Your Password<cr>
OK=<ignore>
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