Windows 95 and RAS

HAve you installed any service packs for win95 ? If not , do that !

Frobo

Two possibilities here.
1. If the system behaves as though you are authenticated, no prompts for login to access net resources, then you need to run a ras update. I believe the file can be found at MSKnowledgebase, rasupd.exe or ras2upd.exe, depending on 95 version.
2. If the system behaves as though you are not authenticated then try the following. Setup the ip configuration for the dun connection. For some reason, it just seems to work more consistently with this setup.

Win95 with RAS is very questionable, even with SR2 installed. Upgrading to Win98 is the only way to go.

Don

Update the Dial Up Networking (DUN) of win95 to DUN 3.1 (I beleave this is the last version).
You can find it on Microsofts web site.

Use the following checklist to resolve your problem:
1. Make sure the local Windows 95 username and password (the *.pwl list in your system.ini file) match the username and password of your NT domain.
2. Make sure your workgroup name = your domainname.
3. Make sure you have the latest Win95 DUN client installed. You can find this at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?ReleaseID=12646 (there should be no spaces in this link)
4. If you are using DHCP to provide the clients with the WINs server and gateway IP addresses, it is often unreliable. Try manually inputting the WINs and gateway IP addresses in the TCP/IP properties of the DUN settings of the clients. You definitely need to do this if you are using static addresses onthe clients.
5. For Windows 95 and Windows 95 OSR1 download and install rasupd.exe. For Windows 95 OSR2, install ras2upd.exe. You will find the download link at the MS Knowledge Base under article Q154434 (It solves other problems in addition to "No domain controller available...") You must have DUN1.3 installed first.
6. If your laptops are connected to your LAN via a nic at sometime, allow sufficient time for the master browser to drop your laptops from the browse list before connecting thru the VPN.

If those to tips don't solve the problem...

7. Add LMHOSTS files to the clients. You definitely need this if you are not running WINs.

As a last resort (it will add to your network overhead)...

8. Install NetBEUI as a protocol on your network. It usually eliminates all RAS browsing problems.

There is a patch to win 95 to make it work with NT RAS when running later service packs on NT.

The patch file is called mdialup.exe and it is dated 30/3/99 - if you want I can email it to you - its only 2301Kb - I am pretty sure I got it from themicrosoft site but I remember it was hard to find (I didn;t know the file name back then)