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Share.exe Is Not Supported in Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98 or Windows Me

Article ID: 161619 - View products that this article applies to.

This article was previously published under Q161619

SUMMARY

The Share.exe tool is not included with Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2 (OSR2), Windows 98 or Windows Me. File sharing and locking capabilities are provided by APIs in IFSManager and are not supported in MS-DOS mode. You may not be able to install or run some MS-DOS-based programs or 16-bit Windows-based programs that require Share.exe in OSR2, Windows 98 or Windows Me.

MORE INFORMATION

In earlier versions of Windows, Share.exe is used only in real-mode MS-DOS. In order to support the FAT32 file system, Share.exe support has been disabled in the real-mode MS-DOS kernel regardless of whether or not you have any drives using the FAT32 file system.

Some programs look for a file named Share.exe in either the root folder or the DOS folder. This file can be a zero-byte file created with a text editor (such as Notepad). Other programs may simply look for the string "share" in the Autoexec.bat file.

To create a file named Share.exe, follow these steps:

Click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Notepad.
In Notepad, on the File menu, click Save As.
In the Save In box, click the drive C. This saves the file to the root folder on your computer.
In the File Name box, type "share.exe" (with the quotation marks), and then click Save.

Note For Windows Millennium Edition, save a copy to the drive C and to the \Windows\System folder.
Quit Notepad.

Note Do not add a reference to this Share.exe file in the Autoexec.bat file on your computer. The empty Share.exe file cannot be run when you start the computer. For information about how to copy files, click Start, and then click Help. Type copying files on the Index tab, and then double-click the Help topic Copying Files, Folders.