Diskless & Single floppy workstations
running Windows 3 on VX-Net
We have recently discovered a problem using the above configuration on a
machine with more than 1MB of memory, when running in 386 enhanced mode. If a workstation
previously configured with HIMEM.SYS in its config.sys and then "WIN / 3" is
run, the workstation will appear to hang upon exiting windows.
If a mono screen is used, the following message is displayed;
NET806: Netbios commond limit exceeded
Abort, Retry, Fail?
If a colour monitor is used, no message will be displayed; in either
case (Colour or Mono Monitor) pressing "F" four times returns the machine to the
DOS prompt with no apparent ill effects, and running "WIN/3" again at this point
will continue without further error - because windows itself has now disabled the
swapfile. Re-booting the machine starts the cycle once more.
This problem only occurs on VX-NET IF a swapfile on a network drive is
used. A fix to this problem is to disable the swapfile function within the
"SYSTEM.INI" file, by inserting the following line into the "[386Enh]"
section;
paging=no
Other functions of enhanced mode are unaffected.
| N.B. |
386 enhanced mode is not the default mode for this hardware
configuration. If just "WIN" with no switches is run, then windows 3 will run in
standard mode ("/S"). It should be pointed out that the use of a network
swapfile, will;
1. Reduce performance of the workstation
2. Result in extra disk space on the fileserver being used unnecessarily. |
We would therefore NOT recommend the use of a network swapfile,
regardless of the type of network used.
Apricot R&D are however investigating the problem with VX-NET.
----------oOo---------- |
