win98 logon to domain with wireless pc card

The laptop doesnt have a network port :-/ Its configured properly. I mean after windows fully loads I can ping the server and access most of its features. However, some programs dont work quite the way they do on all other computers on the network (most of them are XP though). I dont have any trouble authenticating, as far as I know its just that the card doesnt work at login time.

>>Also, if you can log in locally, you should be able to configure the wireless properties right there.  Is there a reason why you can't?

What do you mean? I can login locally, and then connect through the wireless card fine, but then I am not logged into the domain controller or am I? I mean I can access the network drives and run the programs so does that mean I am fully connected to the server?

The specific issue I am having is that there is one file server program that does not let me modify files (says permission denied) which I think is because I am not logged into the server fully. It could just be a problem with the 98 though I guess?

>>are you sure you have the correct permissions  to those files? You can read those files, just not modify them?

This is true, but this program is installed the same way on this windows 98 laptop as it is on every XP desktop in the office. The desktops can modify these files without any problem, but this laptop cant. I just assumed it was because I wasnt properly logged into the domain but maybe im wrong? I guess I will have to dig deeper into the program to see whats up.

Any other thoughts on this?

Thanks for the input so far guys

permissions work like this
when  you log on to your machine and supply a username and password you create an access token
then when you try and access resources on the domain, there is an acl (access control list) for each resource (file, printer, etc) and each is unique to that resource
the token is checked against the acl, and the appropriate permissions are granted (read, modify, full control, etc)
this is further supplemanted by groups, you can set permissions for groups, and add users to groups, and then the permissions are applied to each member of the group
then to confuse things even more, a user can be a member of multiple groups,
in that case the most permissive permission applies.
Then if that isn't enough, there are NTFS permissions, and group permissions for ntfs
again the most permissive permission applies, but now things get confusing
the most restrictive of the ntfs and share permissons apply

Hope that's clear as mud LOL


BTW, like the username you have, I'm an old hacker, but love the game :-)

ok. im fairly familiar with permissions and I know our active directory fairly well. All of the users in our domain are in the same group and the policies are the same. The only thing I know for sure is that there are a couple users in the group that do have domain admin labels. Perhaps that is causing the issue, but I will have to double check.

o and i forgot, so does the domain server use the account that I login to the laptop locally as the login to test whether I have the rights to access or not? So if I login as username/password Tom/Green locally on the laptop and then try to access the server...does the server check Tom/Green against the active directory? I just dont understand Windows 98 AT ALL. Why wont it just die? :'( If only I could install XP on these dinosaur laptops.

You do have the ds client installed on this box?

ummmm....sure?  :P

http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/ArticleID/15214/15214.html
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;249841

ill try dsclient tomorrow and see what happens

:-)

ok, update. everything appears to be working. the actual issue I was running into was program specific and not related to the issue I originally thought. I have as much access to the server as I should.

Thanks guys.

Thanks!