SAMBA rejecting passwords from Win98 clients - the fix

[D.E.Pollard]

There have been several postings about this phenomenon and we too
fell into it when we introduced Win98 clients onto the network.
Somewhere on the web I found the answer:

By default Win98 sends passwords to a server encrypted, and by
default SAMBA compiles with encrypted passwords switched off.
Therefore the password one types in from a Win98 client is received
by SAMBA in an encrypted form. SAMBA does not recognise it and
rejects it.

One can either migrate all clients over to using encrypted passwords
and recompile SAMBA, and there are notes about this at the SAMBA
website. Or one can switch off the encryption on the Win98 client by
editing the registry. We have tried the latter and it works.

Run regedit.  Select
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\Vnetsup

Install the file ptxt_on.inf found in the tools\mtsutil directory of
the Win98 CD. It's  a short file so I reproduce it here:

; Decrypt.INF
; Copyright (c) 1993-1995 Microsoft Corporation

[version]
signature="$CHICAGO$"

[DefaultInstall]
AddReg=Enable.Plaintext

[Enable.Plaintext]
HKLM,System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\VNETSUP,EnablePlainTextPassword,1,01,00,00,00

At a later time one can reverse this and have encrypted passwords
again by installing ptxt_off.inf, also on the CD.

All the best,
  Deborah Pollard
  Dept of Engineering
  QMW, Univ of London