no network in Windows 95

[ricecrispies]

I have installed Windows 95. While I was installing there were many files I couldn't install because it was demanding to see the floppies when I had actually installed from an ISO, even though the cab files of each of those floppies was on the DC ROM. In later versions of windows there is an option to point Windows to where the files to be installed are located, but there is none in Windows 95. When I tried to install network drivers afterwards I got the same problem. As a consequence I have neither internet nor Windows file sharing. Is there any way to get networking functioning?

[mpack]

The only way is to know how to do it (Google is your friend), and you'll get very little help from Win95 in that regard. Microsoft hardly even claimed to take the Internet seriously before Win98, but IMHO it wasn't until XP that mere mortals could be confident of getting a browser working. For Win95 the preferred solution was to go to an IT company and get them to do it.

Btw, you might get file sharing to work eventually, but you can pretty much forget Internet. Win95 internet compatibility is 23 years out of date.

[ricecrispies]

You're certainly right about the internet in Windows 95 being rather basic and fiddly, but isn't there another problem here? I installed from a CD-ROM image, but Windows 95 demands to see the floppies when it wants to install additional drivers instead of asking for the installation CD. A lot of the files it refuses to find in this way are network-related. This was actually the second time I had tried to install Windows 95 in VirtualBox. The first time, I installed from floppy images, but even then it kept demanding to see the floppies afterwards, but couldn't find them even when I inserted them (and in the end it wouldn't start up because of a missing file). Presumably Windows 95 didn't get confused like this, trying to find drivers, when it was installed directly on a physical computer? How can I get Windows 95 to look in the right place for the files it needs?

[socratis]

How can I get Windows 95 to look in the right place for the files it needs?

Ask Microsoft? I doubt that you're going to get a descent answer any time soon, but I suspect that there might be something wrong with your installation media. There have been a lot of people that are installing Win95, but not personally, I haven't. What I've seen is that most suggestions talk about installing Win98 SE, if you have it available...

[ricecrispies]

I need Win95 for a project of an artistic nature. I know that Win98 would be easier, but it's not what I'm looking for.

I did eventually manage to install a few of the missing files by typing the drive letter and path to the cab file corresponding to the disk number requested (I'd forgotten how hard life was in the days before you could just browse for things like that), but this still depends on Windows 95 prompting me for the missing files and telling me which disk I need to insert, which it is very reluctant to do. I tried coaxing it to do this by removing and reinserting various network-related drivers and dlls, but I only succeeded in permanently deleting the driver for the network adapter (which wasn't working properly anyway).

[andyp73]

I'll have a dig around and see if I can find my Windows 95 installation media and also whether it is still readable to see if I can get a vm up and running and take a look at what goes on.

Dredging back through the darkest recesses of my memory I seem to recall that things improved in the OSR2 release of Windows 95 over the initial release but then significantly improved in Windows 98.

-Andy.

[ricecrispies]

Thanks!

The version of Windows 95 that I'm working with is Windows 95 C.

[andyp73]

A quick search on Wikipedia lists Windows 95 C as being OSR2.5 which was the last version prior to the release of Windows 98. I haven't yet found my Windows 95 install CD but did come across both Windows ME and Vista both of which I must have purchased in moments of madness!

Looking at my Windows 98 virtual machine then to get at the device manager I have to right-click on "My Computer" on the desktop and then select "Properties" and then the "Device Manager Tab". From there I can right click on missing devices, head to the "Driver" tab and then select "Update driver". I seem to recall that for many devices you do have to manually point Windows towards C:\Windows\inf, C:\Windows\System and C:\Windows\System32\Drivers at the appropriate times.

-Andy.

[mpack]

Dredging back through the darkest recesses of my memory I seem to recall that things improved in the OSR2 release of Windows 95 over the initial release but then significantly improved in Windows 98.

Improved yes, but user friendly? Not yet. I was going to post a link to that "*&^%$ing Windows 98 - get Bill Gates in here!" clip from South Park, but decided that maybe it would be inappropriate for a "family website" . Still, it contains a germ of truth about Win98 claims and the reality of them - and also of course implies that Win95 didn't even have that.

[andyp73]

Despite coming across many gems from the past I have been unable to locate the Windows 95 install CD so I am unable to help any further than things I can remember doing 20+ years ago!

On the other hand, if anyone has any questions on Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Fedora Core 4, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Delphi v1.0 then I have install media for all of those. Me thinks it might be time for an office clear out!

-Andy.

[ricecrispies]

I decided yesterday to cast the net wider and try to install 98 SE, since visually it looks close enough to Windows 95 to pass for it to someone who isn't an enthusiast. And it was indeed easier in the sense that I now had functioning internet and could load a web page. However I am stuck on the graphics. In Windows 95 I was able to install the Scitech graphics driver and have an acceptably sized desktop, but in Windows 98 Scitech (which I managed to install using one of the hints above) can't see any graphics card other than standard VGA. All I need is an internet connection and a desktop large enough to display a browser window, but I can't seem to get the two together in the same virtual machine. It's so frustrating!

[ricecrispies]

Despite coming across many gems from the past I have been unable to locate the Windows 95 install CD so I am unable to help any further than things I can remember doing 20+ years ago!

On the other hand, if anyone has any questions on Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Fedora Core 4, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Delphi v1.0 then I have install media for all of those. Me thinks it might be time for an office clear out!

-Andy.

Thanks very much for trying!

[andyp73]

I decided yesterday to cast the net wider and try to install 98 SE... but in Windows 98 Scitech (which I managed to install using one of the hints above) can't see any graphics card other than standard VGA.

For some reason I never managed to get the graphics working in my Windows 98 vm. I didn't need it for much so did what I had to do with VGA resolution and never had a need to go back to fix it. I would be interested to know if you do find a solution!

-Andy.

[mpack]

I never bothered with the SciTech driver because it is copyrighted and protected. I installed the BearWindows driver and had no trouble with it at all. I just tested it and my "Win98SE ACPI" VM is still running just fine under VirtualBox 5.2.4 with guest display settings of 1280x1024x32bpp.

Unfortunately I can't really use the internet with that VM at present because the browser (Opera 10.10, one of the last browser versions that ran on Win98) can't handle "https" connections, which is pretty much everything these days. Maybe I could fix this if I had a reason to do the work.

[ricecrispies]

OK thanks. I think I looked at the Bear Windows web site before and found it a bit intimidating, but I'll take another look at it.

Right now I'm back trying to get networking functioning in Windows 95. When it started up I got a lot of messages about missing vxds and dlls. I found all of these files by browsing through the cabs on the installer image and dumped them in c:\windows\system. This worked for all the vxds, but not the dlls. The two dlls in question are nwnp32.dll (which is just netware and isn't important) and msnp32.dll (which I'm guessing is important). I tried creating c:\windows\system32 and dumping them in that, but that hasn't worked either. I don't know where else to put these files so that Windows finds them.