LMHOSTS #INCLUDE of Local Files May Fail on Windows NT 3.5

ID: Q122781

3.50
WINDOWS
kbnetwork kbbug3.50 kbfix3.50.sp2

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows NT Workstation version 3.5
Microsoft Windows NT Server version 3.5

SYMPTOMS

Using the #INCLUDE statement in LMHOSTS files to include local files may not work reliably in Windows NT version 3.5. For example:


   #INCLUDE c:\temp\lmhosts

The NBTSTAT -C command may show that the names and addresses in the C:\TEMP\LMHOSTS file did not get loaded into cache.

CAUSE

A bug in the text-parsing routines resulted in an incorrect full path being generated for the local file.

A full pathname (\dosdevices\c:\temp\lmhosts) needs to be generated...and the concatenation routine expected to receive two null-terminated strings to build this... The nbt code set the length of the first string to be only that of the actual characters in the string, which meant that the null terminator could be stepped on by other code that could then use that memory. This caused intermittent failures, as sometimes the null terminator would still be there in memory.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Windows NT version 3.5. This problem was corrected in the latest U.S. Service Pack for Windows NT version 3.5. For information on obtaining the Service Pack, query on the following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces):

S E R V P A C K

Additional query words: prodnt 3.50

Keywords : ntnetserv nttcp NTSrvWkst
Version : 3.50
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type :