Patching Role Error

If you have more than 28 Mb of memory on a desktop computer, you can speed up Windows 95 by changing the Typical role from desktop computer to Network server. Unfortunately, there was an error in the programming of the first version of Windows 95. Therefore, if you don't have version 950B, also known as OSR2, you should not change the role to Network server or you should patch the code to correct the error. If you are familar with the use of Win95 program RegEdit, it is easy to make the four changes. However, the registry is a critical part of Win95. If you make an improper change, Win95 may stop working. Nevertheless, I have made this change on many computers without any problems. For more information on fixing this error see Incorrect Settings for File System Performance Profiles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (Article ID: Q138012).

The error is that two sets of two bytes are interchanged for the NameCache and PathCache values of the registry key:

   Hkey_Local_Machine\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\FS Templates\Server

With RegEdit, change the first two values in each row to be:

   Value name   Value data
   ------------------------
   NameCache    a9 0a 00 00
   PathCache    40 00 00 00

Now you can change the Typical role by following the directions in Win95 setup

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Last revised: July 22, 1999