Annoying: Win95 looking for pcnfs.386

In the last couple of days I successfully installed a Cisco wireless card in my Win95 computer. In the process, I had a couple of false starts in installing the driver.

While the wireless card works okay, now whenever Windows is loading, it stops with a black screen and gives a white text message that it cannot find a device file that is needed to run Windows or a Windows App. It says that the Windows registry or system.ini is looking for it. It then says to either restore the file or delete the application that is calling for it.

It next lists the file name as

PCNFS.386.

The annoyance is that I must then hit the enter key, after which the computer waits about 45 seconds before it completes loading the operating system. So far everything seems to be working okay except for this interuption.

I searched the registry with regedit, and found a reference to this file is at

System
CurrentControlSet
Services
VxD
PCNFS
Static VxD "PCNFS.386 "



In the system.ini file almost the last entry has

[Network Drivers]
pcnfs.sys=/F30 /C^




I tried restoring the Windows Registry from a tape backup of over a month ago, and that didn't fix it. I also searched my backups for the "PCNFS.386" file and it wasn't there.

Does anyone have a suggestion on what I should do to kill this annoyance?

Terry

 

Solution

I backed up the registry, and deleted the value in the VXD area. It seems to have solved the problem without other ill effects (I hope).

Terry

 

I believe that file would be necessary if accessing the network through a dos prompt.
When you deleted the Key, you got the thing that was causing the prompt at boot.

 

Is this something I should try to fix? So far I've had no reason to use the network with a DOS prompt and cannot anticipate the need. I've also searched for the file that was referenced in many places and haven't found it, so I don't know if I have a choice anyway.

Terry

 

Since your network is running, I wouldn't worry about it. It's only real purpose was for reverse compatibilty, not needed for Windows 9x.