WindowsFWG 3.11 Question

[JorgeA]

Hello,

Is there a place in the MSFN Forum where it might be in order to post a question about Windows for Workgroups 3.11?

There doesn't seem to be a section for it, but I don't want to post about WFWG3.11 where that might be frowned upon. Windows 95/98 is the closest I can get to it, so that's why I posted it here as a start.

Thank you!

--JorgeA

[Kelsenellenelvian]

OK then shoot!

[Guest wsxedcrfv]

Is there a place in the MSFN Forum where it might be in order to post a question about Windows for Workgroups 3.11?

There doesn't seem to be a section for it, but I don't want to post about WFWG3.11 where that might be frowned upon. Windows 95/98 is the closest I can get to it, so that's why I posted it here as a start.

I had a small office setup using WFWG3.11 up until maybe a couple years *AFTER* win-95 was released. We had a 10Base2 coax network and a win-NT server.

You might as well ask your question here. Worst that can happen is that you don't get an answer.

[CoffeeFiend]

and a win-NT server

And I thought we were all using Netware back then. You guys were early adopters. I've ran NT 3.1 before but never on a server.

[Guest wsxedcrfv]

And I thought we were all using Netware back then. You guys were early adopters. I've ran NT 3.1 before but never on a server.

I never ran any Novel software and never really understood what it was for or what you do with it.

[JorgeA]

OK then shoot!

Thanks, Kelsenellenelvian. O.K., here goes --

For the first time in many years, since about January I've been getting into the workings of my various PCs. Been learning a lot. I've done things that a year ago I wouldn't have dreamed of trying, like adding memory, installing and partitioning a new hard disk, installing an OS. The current project involves networking several of my computers. I'm getting acquainted with DNS, DHCP, NetBEUI, TCP/IP, and the like.

One of the PCs I'm networking is a Windows for Workgroups 3.11 tower. As the most primitive of the computers, it of course presents the biggest challenge and the most esoteric circumstances. (The other PCs are a Vista, a Windows 98 Standard Edition, and a Windows 98 Second Edition.)

At this point I've successfully (more or less) managed to put all four machines on a peer-to-peer home network behind a router, to the point where they (mostly) recognize each other and can each accesss the Internet independently. But because the WFWG3.11 PC is so old, I don't have any security software for it, so once I installed NetBEUI on it and before installing TCP/IP, the first thing I did was to scan it for malware off the other PCs.

I scanned it with Avast! 4.8, SuperAntiSpyware, and Spybot Search & Destroy. One of them (Avast, IIRC) found 30 Word documents that had been infected way back when, and seemingly took care of them as a second scan didn't find anything.

Now, I've only scanned that PC with the Win98 computers. (If there was something really bad on it, I did not want it to affect my main PC, the Vista.) After the scans had run for a while on the 3.11's hard disk via the network, I noticed that the icons on my Win98FE tower's desktop had disappeared. The Quick Launch icons also went away, although the little squares where they sit would still rise if you put the cursor over them. The file and drive icons in Windows Explorer all disappeared, as did the icons that show next to the listings in Start --> Programs. Only the icons in the notification area stayed intact.

The next day when I scanned the 3.11 off the Win98SE, the same thing happened to that computer. I had to reboot to get the icons back.

The effect on the Win98FE was worse, as Windows Explorer disappeared completely from the Start --> Programs listings. (FWIW, it was open while I was running the scan.) I got it back, but now it sits way at the bottom of the list.

After this episode, I scanned both of my Win98 machines with their own security software, and neither one found anything wrong with itself. I also checked them with Norton 360 off the Vista PC, and ran the Eset NOD32 online scanner on them through the Vista (networking IS pretty cool). These programs it didn't find anything bad on them, either.

The Vista machine could not (of course) find the 3.11 till I installed TCP/IP on the latter. I had wanted to scan it off the Vista, but not if it's going to mess with my icons!

So the question is -- what could account for this weird behavior? Insights, tips, and warnings will be appreciated!

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

I had a small office setup using WFWG3.11 up until maybe a couple years *AFTER* win-95 was released. We had a 10Base2 coax network and a win-NT server.

You might as well ask your question here. Worst that can happen is that you don't get an answer.

wsxedcrfv,

Thank you! See my question up in the previous post.

The 3.11 was my main PC from 1994 till 2002, believe it or not. As late as December '08, when my Win98 tower developed major problems and I had to run out and get the Vista, it got pressed back into service to receive e-mail via dial-up.

--JorgeA

[Guest wsxedcrfv]

One of the PCs I'm networking is a Windows for Workgroups 3.11 tower. As the most primitive of the computers, it of course presents the biggest challenge and the most esoteric circumstances. (The other PCs are a Vista, a Windows 98 Standard Edition, and a Windows 98 Second Edition.)

My first question (or - perhaps my only question) is: What on earth could this WFWG tower be doing that is so important for your network that you must keep it functioning instead of replacing it with a win-98 or XP machine?

Regarding your malware experience, I would have suggested that you first remove the hard drive from the WFWG machine and connect it as a slave to a known/trusted machine and scan it with anti-malware software that's already installed/running on the trusted machine.

That is what I would do now with any of your suspect machines - turn them off, remove their drives and slave/scan them one at a time on a known/good machine.

[Kelsenellenelvian]

I really like a "live" CD for scanning possibly infected pc's, you can find\make one with the stuff @ ubcd4win and a XP cd

http://www.ubcd4win.com/

[CoffeeFiend]

you can find\make one with the stuff @ ubcd4win and a XP cd

That might work if it's a modern PC on which he somehow managed to get Win 3.11 to work properly. But on Win 3.11-era hardware, the odds of this working aren't so great.

I would personally do like wsxedcrfv said, just plugging the drive in another computer to run a scan. Then again, malware scanners of today have signatures geared towards modern malware, and may not even have signatures for the kind of really old stuff you may find on there (like stoned from the late 80's and what not)

never really understood what it was for or what you do with it.

Pretty much the same as you would do with a server version of Windows: shares files and printers, authentication, login scripts, etc. It was HUGE before NT caught up as a "mainstream" server.

[Kelsenellenelvian]

you can find\make one with the stuff @ ubcd4win and a XP cd

That might work if it's a modern PC on which he somehow managed to get Win 3.11 to work properly. But on Win 3.11-era hardware, the odds of this working aren't so great.

Aww, yes you are right. I didn't even think of that.

[Guest wsxedcrfv]

never really understood what it was for or what you do with it.

Pretty much the same as you would do with a server version of Windows: shares files and printers, authentication, login scripts, etc. It was HUGE before NT caught up as a "mainstream" server.

You can share files and printers with a workgroup composed of win-98 machines - you don't need a domain controller in the mix if you don't want it. I certainly wouldn't bring a WFWG machine into that or any other mix. Sounds like you would - ?

[CoffeeFiend]

You can share files and printers with a workgroup composed of win-98 machines

Not with centralized authentication and permissions (ACLs) and all that stuff (quotas, etc) we also get with NT and others. And it did a lot of other stuff REALLY well like print queues, and it had a lot of other stuff like groupwise.

I certainly wouldn't bring a WFWG machine into that or any other mix. Sounds like you would - ?

Back then (before NT really caught on) it was the best we had, pretty much. Quite comparable to NT, but without the fancy GUI. Mind you I mostly used it in a DOS environment (often booting from ROM), but I've seen many large deployments until the Win2k days, including even PCs running OS/2

Not that it would make any sense to use in this scenario. Besides I really wouldn't use it these days (then again, I wouldn't use Win 3.x or 9x either)

[JorgeA]

My first question (or - perhaps my only question) is: What on earth could this WFWG tower be doing that is so important for your network that you must keep it functioning instead of replacing it with a win-98 or XP machine?

wsxedcrfv,

I'm doing this for two reasons --

1) To contribute its (admittedly limited) processing power to a distributed computing project; and

2) For the technical challenge of it. Actually, I should have done this already twelve years ago when I got my first Win98 PC, but back then I was approaching computers as "black boxes" that performed magic. (Unlike the days of MS-DOS, when I was really into them. Took a while for me to warm up to Windows.) I hope to learn from the experience -- maybe even come to understand why and how newer OSs are better than older ones.

Regarding your malware experience, I would have suggested that you first remove the hard drive from the WFWG machine and connect it as a slave to a known/trusted machine and scan it with anti-malware software that's already installed/running on the trusted machine.

That is what I would do now with any of your suspect machines - turn them off, remove their drives and slave/scan them one at a time on a known/good machine.

Just to be clear on this point -- You're saying that it's not enough to scan these drives remotely from other PCs via the network, and I should still actually take them out and install them on the other PCs to scan them locally? I scanned each of the Win98's with three different scanners off the Vista machine, then scanned the WFWG3.11 tower with a different but overlapping set of three scanners off the Win98 tower. They all yield clean results now.

--JorgeA

[triger49]

Just a passing thought,

F-Prot antivirus for Dos

is still available and the

signature files are kept

up to date.

http://www.f-prot.com/download/home_user/download_fpdos.html

Jake