Direct Cable Connection hassle

Factual Questions
1

I’ve just bought a second-hand computer from a workmate: Celeron 333 running Win98. It’s a significant upgrade from my old P100 and Win95.

Because I had an awful lot of data to transfer from the old box to the new one, I decided that the DCC applet in Windows 95/98 would do the trick. So I connected the two boxes via the LPT1 ports aand fired up DCC. After the initial handshake, a dialog box popped up “Verifying user name and password”. I assume these were incorrect, because the next dialog box informed me the connection failed.

I have been through every *.INI file on both boxes, thorugh all the help files and troubleshooting wizards, but I can’t find the way to get past this hurdle.

What user name and password is being checked with DCC? Where is it stored and how can I access it?
PS In frustation, I found an old copy of LapLink which worked immediately, and solved my dilemma. But I still want to be able to use DCC next time.

2

Having never bothered to try DCC, I don’t know if this is actually relevant. However, whenever I have annoyances with passwords in windows, I find that if you delete the associated .pwl file, it usually gets rid of whatever password it was looking for.

3

I found two *.PWL files, and deleted them, but it made no difference at all.

I’m wondering whether it’s a 95 vs 98 thing.

4

I had this problem about a year ago, and my memory is scratchy, but here goes:

  1. go to the Network control panel and start deleting all protocols except TCP/IP. IPX/SPX/NetBeui seem to really screw the moose for some reason.

  2. there used to be a shareware program that made this even easier - I think it was “direct connection helper” or something like that - but it gave a graphical look at what the hell was going on so it was easier to troubleshoot.