Networking Nightmare IV: Getting Win 98 to connect to Mac OS X

So now I'm fumbling around in the Windows Registry adding keys and DWORD values, a process fraught with danger unless you know what you’re doing – and I don't.

But with the help of a reader I've overcome a major problem in my project to fully network my home setup of Win 98, XP, Vista, Linux and Mac OS X machines.

Yes, I have successfully achieved two-way file sharing between Win 98SE and Mac OS X 10.5.6!

I explained earlier that after hours of research and experimentation, I connected the Win 98 PC to a Linux (Ubuntu) machine by changing a setting in the Linux smb.conf file -- a fix I found buried in a Linux bug report site.

But then I was stumped by the Win 98-Mac connection. Many people said you just had to establish user accounts on each machine with the same name and password and it would work. But they are wrong.

Computerworld reader to the rescue

Fortunately, a reader ID'd as "codix" informed me in a blog comment that:

"Under Windows 98 there is no NTLMV2. So that's the problem, while the authentication doesn’t work correct.

But there is a way to enable it. So you got all clients with nearly the same network configs.

Guide for activating ntlmv2 on win98 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/239869/en-us/

I think if you setup this, you can share correct between all you os'es"

He’s right, so far.

I went to the page he provided, How to enable NTLM 2 authentication and learned from Microsoft support that Win 95 and Win 98 systems used the LAN Manager network authentication protocol, which in Windows NT was updated to NTLM, version 1.

It says computing advancements had rendered both of those protocols vulnerable to cracking, so it developed NTLMV2. It's available for Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 and is included in Windows 2000 and forward.

For Win 98 and Win 95 systems to use it, though, you have to install Active Directory Client Extensions.

So I went to How to install the Active Directory Client Extension and learned the DSClient for Win 98 is still available for download from Microsoft support. Very surprising.

I downloaded and installed the software and went back to the first page that explained actually enabling the client required adding a key to the Windows Registry.

Dangerous stuff

That’s scary.

Every single instruction I've ever read about messing with the Registry came with the strong warning that doing so could really screw up your computer and you’re an idiot if you don’t back up the Registry first – or words to that effect.

So it was off to yet another support page, How to Back Up the Registry in Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition, which explained the task was trivial. Just "Click Start, click Run, type scanregw, and then click OK."

Then it was back to the "enable" page, which directed me to:

1. Start Registry Editor (Regedit.exe).
2. Locate and click the following key in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control 3. Create an LSA registry key in the registry key listed above.
4. On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:
Value Name: LMCompatibility
Data Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 3

Here’s how it explained the effect of this value=3:

Level 3 - Send NTLM 2 response only. Clients will use NTLM 2 authentication and use NTLM 2 session security if the server supports it; domain controllers accept LM, NTLM, and NTLM 2 authentication.

Too technical for me

The technical intricacies of this stuff are mind-boggling. Read this Microsoft TechNet article called The Most Misunderstood Windows Security Setting of All Time if you want just a small taste.

But somehow it all worked after a reboot or two. I can transfer files from Win 98 to Mac OS and vice-versa, from either machine.

Now it’s on to the last file-sharing problem I actually mentioned in my first post: Vista can read and share Win 98 files, and Win 98 can see Vista shares, but it locks up when trying to access them.

Hopefully this NTLMV2 scheme will work for that, too.