Windows 95/98 Clients Cannot See Long Share Names

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This article was previously published under Q160843

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SUMMARY

Windows NT 4.0 allows you to share disk and printer resources using more than 12 characters for the share name. Share names that use more than 12 characters can be seen by Windows NT clients, but not by Windows 95/98 clients.

MORE INFORMATION

During the dialect negotiation, when a Windows 95/98 client is browsing or connecting to the Windows NT server, it tells the server it only supports 8.3 file names.

When browsing the server from the Windows 95/98 client, this results in Windows NT only returning those shares with 12 characters or less.

If you attempt to enter the path of a long share name in Microsoft Explorer, File Manager, or from the Run command on the Start menu, you will receive the following errors:

From the Run command on the Start menu:

The folder <\\server\share> does not exist

From Microsoft Explorer or File Manager:

The following error occurred while trying to connect x: to \\server\share

The share name was not found. Be sure you typed it correctly.

Windows 95/98 does not support share names longer than 12 characters. To browse or connect to printer or disk shares on a Windows NT 4.0 server from a Windows 95/98 client, the share name must be 12 characters or less.