Planning for Shared Installations

This section summarizes some technical issues related to shared installations of Windows 95.

Technical issues for all network clients on shared installations.

Network logon is required before running Windows 95 on shared installations, because network connectivity is required before Windows 95 can run across the network. This can be a generic logon, rather than specific user logon. For more information, see "Configuring Shared Installations."

• One Windows 95 software license is required for each computer that will run Windows 95.
• Because most or all of the Windows 95 files are located on the server for shared installations, loading the shared Windows 95 components increases network traffic.
• Each client computer must use all 32-bit, protected-mode networking components or all 16-bit, real-mode components, not a combination of real-mode and protected-mode components.

  Important After Windows 95 installation is complete, all path statements in login scripts must specify Windows 95 locations, and not Windows 3.x or MS-DOS. Make sure that path variables are set correctly in login scripts to avoid unexpected behavior.

Technical issues for Microsoft protected-mode clients.

These issues are important in your planning for shared installations that use Microsoft Client for NetWare Networks or Client for Microsoft Networks:

• Each client computer must use all 32-bit, protected-mode networking components. For example, a computer running a shared installation cannot run a network client such as Microsoft Client for NetWare Networks using ODI network adapter drivers.
• Real-mode components are required for the first connection to the network during system startup. Microsoft TCP/IP in Windows 95 runs only in protected mode, so the computer must load an IPX/SPX or NetBEUI protocol to make the real-mode connection to the network. After the system loads and switches to protected mode, then Microsoft TCP/IP can be used. Real-mode versions of NetBEUI and IPX/SPX-compatible protocols are built into the real-mode software that is used to make the first connection to the server before Windows 95 starts.
• You cannot use existing NDIS 2.x or ODI drivers to support protected-mode networking clients. For either Client for NetWare Networks or Client for Microsoft Networks, the network adapter must have an NDIS 3.1 driver (although an NDIS 2 driver is used for the first connection to the server during system startup).
• For protected-mode network clients, you cannot use a PCI network adapter or ISA adapters on a PCI computer for system startup over the network. This is because PCI adapters do not start until the second booting of Windows 95. For shared installations, the adapter must start on the first boot.

  Note If a computer has an IBM 16/4 token-ring adapter and has been using ODI drivers, Windows 95 Setup uses the existing ODI driver by default. To use this adapter with a 32-bit, protected-mode network client, you must remove the existing ODI driver and replace it with the Windows 95 NDIS 3.1 driver for the IBM 16/4 token-ring adapter. For information about the specific statements for installing the NDIS 3.1 driver for this adapter as part of a setup script, see Appendix D, "MSBATCH.INF Parameters."

Technical issues for other network clients.

Client computers can run a shared copy of Windows 95 from a server using real-mode network software other than the Microsoft real-mode networking software used for system startup. However, computers that don't use the Microsoft real-mode network software for system startup cannot use protected-mode network clients (such as Client for Microsoft Networks or Client for NetWare Networks).

Shared installation requirements.

Server-based Setup operates on one server at a time. You specify a particular server where Windows 95 files are to be installed and where related machine directories will be created for shared installations.

However, the machine directories do not need to be created on the same server where the Windows 95 files are installed. In fact, to balance the network load, you might prefer to designate specific servers to maintain the Windows 95 source files, and other servers to contain the machine directories and login scripts. Typically, you need to make Windows 95 source files available from multiple servers, both to provide fault tolerance and to reduce network traffic.

On the server, 90 MB of hard disk space is required for the Windows 95 source files. The following summarizes the disk space required for each machine directory on a shared installation, not including the swap file space requirements.

The following table summarizes the disk space and memory requirements for client computers running Windows 95.

Recommended Client System Configuration for Windows 95

1 Microsoft Client for NetWare Networks or Client for Microsoft Networks.

2 For example, Novell NetWare NETX real-mode client.

3 The first number indicates recommended memory; the second value is the minimum requirement.

4 If this configuration uses a machine directory on a server, only the Registry and basic files are local.

Swap file requirements for shared installations.

By default, the swap file for a shared installation is stored in the machine directory. For floppy-disk and remote-boot computers, this means that all paging occurs across the network. If computers configured for floppy-disk or remote-boot startup have hard disks, you will see noticeable performance improvements is the swap file is placed on the hard disk.

To change the location for the swap file, add the entry pagingfile=c:\win386.swp in the [386Enh] section of the SYSTEM.INI file stored in the machine directory. You can add this setting automatically using an [Install] section in the setup script, as described in Appendix D, "MSBATCH.INF Parameters."

The swap file size requirements vary, depending on the amount of RAM in the client computer, the number and kinds of applications that are run, and other factors. For guidelines on swap file size, see Chapter 17, "Performance Tuning."