When you run Windows 95 Setup to create a shared installation for a client computer, information is stored in the client computer's machine directory (not in individual users' home directories). The machine directory contains the following kinds of configuration information:
For floppy disk-based and remote-boot computers, the swap file and TEMP directory are also placed in the machine directory. You must create machine directories on a server for floppy disk-based and remote-boot shared installations. Using machine directories is optional for computers with hard disks that are running a shared version of Windows 95.
You can set up the machine directory for a single computer or specify the filename of a text file that defines machine directories for multiple computer names.
In this text file, the entry for each machine directory must appear on a separate line, in the following format:
For example:
If the file is stored on another server, type the UNC path to the directory.
You can see a list of the machine directories created in the currently selected server by clicking the View button in the Server-based Setup dialog box.
Server-based Setup creates the specified machine directories and, if you specified that a setup script should be created, it stores a setup script in each machine directory.
The best way to take advantage of Server-based Setup for setting up multiple computers is to specify options and run Windows 95 Setup to create a shared installation for one computer. Then, for each group of computers that have the same network adapter and that will start a shared copy of Windows 95, you can use the Set Up Machine dialog box to automatically create machine directories for all computers of the same type.
By using Server-based Setup in this way, you only need to run Windows 95 Setup once for each type of computer configuration. Setup will automatically create machine directories and copy the main Windows 95 files, such as the Registry files, INI files, program groups, and so on, to each new machine directory. For each machine directory, Setup also updates the Registry to set the correct path to the machine directory and to prepare the Run-Once actions to convert program groups and complete other actions.