Accessing vista shares with Windows 98SE

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I have a couple old computers in my home running Windows 98SE. I normally
share an entire storage drive in my main computer so that stuff like music
and video can easily be accessed by all computers. Under Windows XP, the 98
machines can access files perfectly. However, if the drive is shared under
Vista the 98 machines experience severe problems reading the files. The
folder list takes roughly 30-60 seconds to appear, and initially appears
incomplete. Only some of the folders are listed, and folders like 'My Music'
only appear as 'My'. What's even more interesting is if I go into one of the
folders, I can browse those files at normal speed and without any weird
problems. If I try to make changes to those files, once again it slows down
and virtually locks up the 98 machines. I have not tried playing with this
yet, but could IPv6 be causing this type of problem? Currently both IPv6 and
IPv4 are enabled in Vista. Even google fails to return relevant help here.
 
If you search for "98" in the subject line on this group, you'll find you're
not alone. Some of the things I've tried (which may or may not have been
necessary but are definitely not sufficient) are listed in the posts from
last week called "vista crashes Win 98". I believe you're right about
folder lists taking long to appear but for me that is on the computer that
was just booted up (whether Win98 or Vista). After everything is made to
appear in the Networking folder once, then it returns quickly when going
back to the Network icon. By sharing only a special folder I made up for
the purpose, and unsharing Vista's Public and Users folders, I managed to
stop the crashing. However if I try to access a text file from Win98,
Notepad opens up after a long wait but filled only with blanks (like the
space character). It's as though Vista could not authenticate so it sent
blanks where the data should be and Win98 opened Notepad to put the blanks
into based on the file extension. I also tried unchecking IPv6 on Vista's
Networking properties for the LAN adapter I'm using, but it made no
difference.

techweenie said:
I have a couple old computers in my home running Windows 98SE. I normally
share an entire storage drive in my main computer so that stuff like music
and video can easily be accessed by all computers. Under Windows XP, the 98
machines can access files perfectly. However, if the drive is shared under
Vista the 98 machines experience severe problems reading the files. The
folder list takes roughly 30-60 seconds to appear, and initially appears
incomplete. Only some of the folders are listed, and folders like 'My Music'
only appear as 'My'. What's even more interesting is if I go into one of the
folders, I can browse those files at normal speed and without any weird
problems. If I try to make changes to those files, once again it slows down
and virtually locks up the 98 machines. I have not tried playing with this
yet, but could IPv6 be causing this type of problem? Currently both IPv6 and
IPv4 are enabled in Vista. Even google fails to return relevant help
Click to expand...
here.
 
I just did a little messing around and came to some interesting conclusions.
I tried using password protected sharing and installing dsclient on the 98
machine, but instead of changing the authentication settings on vista, I
changed 98 to use ntlm 2 only. That didn't work and trying to access the
vista share returned an unknown error 31. I also tried testing different
settings using vmware, but there were severe problems just getting the guest
os to see vista. I went back to disabling password protection and then
installed netbeui using the xp driver. The 98 machine was once again able to
see the vista machine, but browsing the shares was incredibly slow and
directory listings were still incomplete. I then unbound tcp/ip from file
and printer sharing and client for microsoft networks and set netbeui as the
default protocol on the 98 machine. I couldn't figure out how to change
protocol bindings in vista, so i just disabled tcp/ip altogether. I can
still see the vista machine from 98, but it's still just as slow as ever.
This leads me to believe there's a problem with the actual client for
microsoft networks and/or file and printer sharing in vista. Now I'm
wondering if it's possible to install those services using XP drivers. So
that is what I'm headed off to try next since I don't have to worry about
screwing up vista. (i have xp on a separate partition ready to boot whenever
I want.)
 
I'm glad I'm not the only one! Definately a Win98 issue. XP will talk to the
same Vista machine on the same HW (exactly). Vista accesses all of the 98
shares perfectly. It is simply that 98 will not read the Vista shares. They
are visible, but 98 Hangs if one attempts to actually open a file.

Do you think Sir Bill will care?
 
I'm glad I'm not the only one! Definately a Win98 issue. XP will talk to the
same Vista machine on the same HW (exactly). Vista accesses all of the 98
shares perfectly. It is simply that 98 will not read the Vista shares. They
are visible, but 98 Hangs if one attempts to actually open a file.

Do you think Sir Bill will care?
Click to expand...

I doubt this will ever be fixed. :-) I have a similar issue with older NAS
drives that Vista can't access. It's the reason I'm still using XP on my main
computer.
John Will
Microsoft MVP - Networking
 
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