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Can I network 2 PCs, 1 with Win95/FAT16 and 1 with Win98/FAT32 ??

H

HepDude

Senior member
Hi!

I want to network two PCs with standard LAN.

One PC is Win95a with FAT16 partitions.

The new PC will be Win98 (soon WinME) with FAT32 partitions.

Will the FAT32 partitions be invisible to the Win95a PC or will the network allow the Win95a to view files on the FAT32 partitions of the Win98 PC?

Thanks for any help - I tried searching the web, but only found endless ancient pages on converting FAT16 to FAT32 - nothing about networking (despite including that word in the search).
 
Yes, you can network those with no problems. It make no difference whatsoever, just set them up like the other machine is exactly identical to this one.
 
As has been mentioned, the partition type doesn't matter over a network -- it's only important to the machine to which the drive is physically mounted. Over a network, it's the file sharing protocol (i.e. SMB, NFS, etc) that's important.

Just enable "File & Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks" (it's called that in Win2K, should be similar on 95/98) on both machines, and you should have no troubles.
 
I've also seen a recommendation to partition the HD on the new Win98 as follows:

- 2GB FAT16 partition for C: with only Windows (this separate partition allows Windows to be reinstalled to cure problems without affecting any other programs; FAT16 partition allows you to do DOS stuff if necessary)

- FAT32 partition of remaining size for rest of programs and data (the recommendation also included the idea of copying the Win98 CD-ROM to this partition, so that one could re-install Windows from this partition to the other one without even needing the CD-ROM drive to be working, or the CD-ROM to be at hand, and faster install as well).

What do you think of these recommendations?
 
That's always a good idea, especially when dealing with unreliable operating systems such as Win95/98 🙂. But it's a totally separate issue from the original networking question.
 
Though having a separate partition for Windows is a good idea, it doesn't have to be FAT16. The DOS that comes with Win95 OSR2 and later versions works just as well under FAT32.
 
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