LMHOSTS File Referenced in #INCLUDE Is Not Parsed at Startup by Windows 95/98 Clients (233193)

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After you perform the procedure in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article, Nullsessions support is enabled and the registry entry specifies the directory that is shared.
The #INCLUDE statement is used as a way for administrators to have a centralized LMHOSTS file that clients parse. In this way, the administrator can edit one file on the server and the clients are then updated.

LMHOSTS File at the Client and Server Computer

• The LMHOSTS file on the client has two entries. One entry for the server that the #INCLUDE statement references and then the #INCLUDE statement, which can reference a text or LMHOSTS file.
• The remote file has the centralized list of entries.

When the remote file referenced in the #INCLUDE statement does NOT have at least WRITE permission for the Everyone or the Network group, the Windows 95/98 client parses its own LMHOSTS file, but does not parse the remote file. Directly after startup, run the following command from an MS-DOS command prompt: nbtstat -c The result shows (at a minimum) three entries for the server that contains the remote file, but not the contents of the remote file.

After the startup process is complete, it is possible to run nbtstat -R and then nbtstat -c and the remote file is then parsed.

If the remote file does have at least WRITE permissions for the Everyone or Network group, then both the entries in the local LMHOSTS and the remote file are seen with nbtstat -c at startup.