Hiya!!!

I started messing with win3.11 and installing them under a FAT32 partition with the help of W3XSTART ... all is well but I am unable to make the network work....

I always get the "The windows for workgroups network driver was unable to load" error on windows boot...

(the NIC/PC is working fine under DOS with a packet driver, I have used both arachne and mTCP to transfer files , no problems whatsoever and trying 3.11 networking on the same setup, hadware and network structure)

First of all I install the nic driver (a plain 8139D nic)

I get the user/workgroup/computer name screen and username: user311 , workgroup: workgroup (same as win7/xp machines and computer name: win311)

then I check the network settings which seem fine:

and the overall network view:

I reboot the pc and since I use a multi-config I just manually type "net start" before windows load:

seems fine but when win311 boots I am always greeted with this:

I have tried the "basic 3.11 network" setting that (to my understanding) switches to NDIS2 driver that loads a paket-like tsr when you type "net start" ... I see the extra info (card name, speed , address etc) but when I start windows this time there are a couple of BSOD's about vxd drivers that are not present and that my windows configuration is invalid. Then I get a smaller message telling me that network is not loaded.

Is this because of the "win3.11 on fat32" install? Does networking need share.exe to be loaded? (I load ms's update of vshare.386 that says in the readme is a replacement for share.exe and you need to comment it out from autoexec.bat)

Am I missing something vital here? I am doing the same things like this guide here: http://www.garethjmsaunders.co.uk/pc/net_wfwg_02_netbeui.html , it makes things look so easy!

I know this is ancient stuff but any help/tips will be greatly appreciated, thanks!!!

Edited March 24, 201214 yr by keropi666

I have found the problem... it was IFSHLP.SYS

I was using the one from win98SE and it loaded fine but it prevented the 3.11 network driver to work

I tried the windows3.11 IFSHLP.SYS and networking worked at once...

I will open a more important thread about IFSHLP.SYS and FAT32...