So far I never was able to run a Windows XP guest OS from a raw disk partition using Linux VMWare. Here's the discussion thread. I guess coLinux will rescue me sooner or later.

You need: the Windows95 installation CD and a Windows 95 version B boot floppy. As I don't have a floppy drive I have to create a floppy image of the boot floppy. Under VMware boot from the Windows95 boot floppy. Create a primary partion that fills the virtual disk completely (options 1 and then 1 again and then yes). Reboot Windows95. Format the virtual disk and install Windows95: format C: /S R:\WIN95\SETUP /IS I couldn't get my installation CD to work.

Network browsing in Windows is a mystery. Sometimes some computers simply don't show up when browsing a network. This seems to be especially true for Linux servers. Under newer versions of the Windows OS (2000, XP), you can connect to a server (if you know its IP adress) via the mount network drive command even though the network browser cannot see that server. Windows NT doesn't have that option. The only possibility is to use the "net use" command from the command line. This is uncomfortable, although one can make .bat files for frequently used connections.

Since I always use some GUIs, I don't really remember anymore how to connect to a Windows machine via the command line. smbclient -L windowshost shows you the shares that are available. Often, you you cannot browse them without a login/password for that windows machine, therefore you need to type smbclient -L windowshost -U username And occasionally the netbios name doesn't work either and you need to replace it by the IP address.

My sister has sent me again an attachment which was encoded in the winmail.dat attachment. Sucks big time. Not only Linux users get pissed but also Macintosh users. Of course you can open it as long as you know how. On Mac OS X you need TNEF's Enough and on Linux you need tnef. Suse Linux 9.2 has an rpm that works well with KMail. Just click the winmail.dat and select "Open with tnef".