DOS ain't dead

Hi everyone,

I have been searching the web for information on this, but
with no luck. I hope someone of you guys can help me...

I have a TCP/IP stack which works well in pure DOS with
packet drivers, no matter what type of packet/protocol
I use.

However, in Windows XP only UDP packets are being
sent. I cannot send (and therefore receive) any TCP packet.

I have verified that no TCP packets are put on the network with
Wireshark and SWSVPKT's pktdump.

In the beginning I only used ndis3nt, but I get the same effect when
using swsvpkt. I have also tried other tools which use TCP, without
any success.

In one forum, I found that this might be a driver conflict with some
other protocol drivers binding to that network / ethernet card, so
I disabled all other protocols and drivers on the target network card
except for the virtual packet driver. But the above problem remains.

Has anyone of you ever experienced this?

Any help appreciated. :)

All the best,
Stefan / AH

EDIT:
A few minutes ago I saw that ndis3nt actually was able to connect
and retrieve a few packets via TCP from a FTP server.
So, removing all protocol bindings from the target ethernet card seems
to work for ndis3nt, but it is pretty unusable since it only
allows to send 75 packets. Btw, these packets were still not shown
via pktdump or Wireshark. Very mysterious...

SWSVPKT is what I need to get working, since it has no such limitations.

On Watt32 page is written that you must have installed some mysterious WinPcap and NPF.SYS

Anyway, the best help can you give the people from some Watt32 mailing list, f.e. on Yahoogroups.

Or you could use the Wsockxs
http://www.angelfire.com/tx5/someone42/programming.html

---
DOS-u-akbar!

Another update to my post:

SWSVPKT also doesn't send any ICMP packets.

So, I can conclude that swsvpkt does not send TCP/ICMP packets but
sends UDP, without any changes.
While ndis3nt does send TCP/ICMP/UDP packets in the very same configuration
with the same programs.

I am puzzled...

> On Watt32 page is written that you must have installed some mysterious
> WinPcap and NPF.SYS

Yes, if I want to use the WATT32 packet capture features I need these files.
Since I am not using WATT32 but the FPC ipstack by Diego De Marco this
probably won't apply to my problem.

I have searched the net for SWSVPKT and TCP.
I think there isn't a much more general search text that I can seach for.
Hm, I haven't tried SWSVPKT only... :P

> Or you could use the Wsockxs
> http://www.angelfire.com/tx5/someone42/programming.html

It took me 3 months to find and settle on one of the plenty TCP/IP stacks
available. Also, don't forget that Wsockxs is Windows only, but my goal
is a DOS TCP/IP stack, working (at least for a start) with the Packet Driver API. I'd love to be able to develop this in Windows since it's much more
comfortable to develop on.

Thanks for the link anyway, it may prove helpful someday...

Have you tried e-mailing the author of SWSVPKT (Lawrence Rust???) lately? Or even the granddaddy of packet drivers, Russ Nelson?

> Have you tried e-mailing the author of SWSVPKT (Lawrence Rust???) lately?
> Or even the granddaddy of packet drivers, Russ Nelson?

No, not yet.
This will be my last resort if I won't find the solution myself or with
the help of this forum. :)

Also, from their homepage: http://www.softsystem.co.uk/page7.html
Important Notice

In line with our policy on Windows products, SwsVpkt will no longer be developed or supported by Software Systems.

I don't want to annoy them with my reuest for help.

Thanks to the help of Federico Bianchi I have solved my
problems with SWSVPKT.

Here's a little checklist of things to do to get everything working correctly
(on Windows XP SP):

A) Install SWSVPKT (should be no problem)

B) Disable (uncheck) the "Software Systems virtual packet driver" in the network
card properties of all cards, which you don't want to access.

C.1) Disable (uncheck) the Windows "Internetprotocol (TCP/IP)" protocol
in the network card properties; this conflicts with the TCP/IP stack
built into the application. A reboot is required.
This step necessary if you want to use BOOTP/DHCP.
C.2) or use a different IP-Address for this application IP stack compared to the
Windows TCP/IP stack. DHCP won't work with this.

D.1) Windows Firewall: Disable or make sure that the IP for this network card
is not blocked (I disabled it so I have no experience with it).
D.2) ZoneAlarm: Make sure that the selected IP address is added to the Firewall->Zones
list as a secure zone. If it is not added, packets from this IP will be blocked.
Also, make sure that you enable "Show all warnings" in the "Warnings and Protocols" tab,
so you will never wonder why all your packets disappear...
Last but not least, I now know that entering ZoneAlarms "GameMode" does
not disable ZoneAlarm. This is why I found the main reason for my problems that late.
Checking the Firewalls was the very first thing I did of course.

I hope this will be of help to others sooner or later.

All the best,
Stefan / AH