I'm seeing "Deterministic Networks Mac Shim" in network adapter?

[Nomen]

I was having problems with a usb thumb drive so I started my win-98 system in safe mode and went through device manager blowing away anything USB-related.  I have a USB keyboard, USB mouse and a USB-attached multi-SD-card reader as my only USB devices (other than what-ever thumb drive I happen to plug in).  In going through device manager I saw, under Network Adapters, my ethernet card (Davicom 9102/A) and something called "Deterministic Networks Mac Shim" (it was shown with the same mini-icon as the Davicom card).  I don't recall seeing that before.  I leave it alone for now.  Maybe it's got something to do with the Win-98 Personal Web Server I installed a few months ago (which I'm not running any more and have disabled via msconfig).

I reboot and run the nusb36 thing and maybe reboot a few more times and everything is back to normal (USB-wise).  I can read the thumb drive now.

But something's wrong - no internet.  I check - yes, the cable is still plugged in.  I want to bring up network properties - but Network Neighborhood has disappeared from my desktop.  That "Mac Shim" thing is also gone from device manager.  Turns out I have no installed network protocals.  ?  I add TCP/IP and do all the settings and re-boot.  Upon restart, I get a message that "Deterministic Networks Enhancer has been re-installed because TCP/IP has been re-installed" and I have to re-boot.  um, ok, I reboot, and I have network access again.  I'm looking at what this Deterministic thing is, it's using DNEMAC.VXD (Deterministic Networks Enhancer Adapter, file date 8/15/2001) and IPSecDrv.VXD (Safenet IPsec plugin, Safenet VPN client, file-date 5/3/2002) and maybe a few other files.  A web-search for this stuff seems to always point to Cisco and/or VPN stuff.  I've never set up VPN software on this system.

If this is for the Win-98 PWS, how can the files be dated after 1999?  If this isin't for PWS, what could it be for?

 

[pangoomis]

It looks to be related with Winproxy, did you install Winproxy?

[Nomen]

In November 2015 I was messing around with a Lenovo M50 thinkcenter and I downloaded 2ajz51usa.exe and 2pjy25usa.exe which were supposed to be primarily bios updates. The only place I'm seeing dnemac.vxd on my system is in c:\windows\system and c:\2ajt51a.doc (yes that's a folder). I wouldn't have run those exe files on this system unless I couldn't unpack them with winrar, and I see that winrar indicates that it can unpack them. For the folder c:\2ajt51a.doc to have been created, it must have been done programatically because I normally wouldn't unpack new or temp stuff on my c drive.

I also see that a few days later I downloaded lenovo-drivers-update-utility.zip which contains lenovo-drivers-update-utility.exe which doesn't unpack with winrar or 7zip so it's quite possible I ran that file on this system to get at the files.

A search for "winproxy" turns up no files or folders containing that string.

A search for ipsecdrv.vxd turns up only in my c:\windows\system folder, which again is unusual to not see it anywhere else. The file seems to be somewhat rare - there are about 600 search results for "ipsecdrv" (most of them seem to be ipsecdrv.sys) and only 30 search results for ipsecdrv.vxd (and only 2 results when ipsecdrv.vxd is put in quotes, one of those results being this thread).

So beyond the mystery of why I have those 2 drivers installed and active on my system, there remains the question what this "Mac Shim / Enhancer Adapter" is doing on my system - what new or strange ability/capability does my system have because it's there?

Regarding "ipsec" itself, I see that in 2013 I installed something called "Microsoft IPSec VPN" which the config utility lets me set either an automatic or a specific certificate for IPSec authentication (I have it set to Auto) or use a pre-shared key, and to enable IPSec logging (which is doing). Why I installed this, I don't know. Probably to see if it would help FF-2 browsing experience.

As for whether or not Win-98 has (or doesn't have?) a driver specifically for IPSec (and if "ipsec" is part of the file name) it would seem the answer is no. This file I have - IPSecDrv.VXD, made by "SafeNet", seems to be win-98 compatible.