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I am trying to share a CD-ROM drive over a Windows for Workgroups network, but I cannot access the CD-ROM from any of the other PCs on the network, even though I can share hard disks from the same machine with no problems

Explanation: You have a CD-ROM drive on PC #1 that you want to be able to share and access from PC #2 using Windows for Workgroups. PC #2 can see and access shared hard disks on PC #1, but not the CD-ROM drive.

Diagnosis: There are a number of possible reasons for why you might not be able to share a resource over a local area network; I currently do not cover networking on this site but wanted to point out a particularly annoying quirk with CD-ROM sharing over Windows for Workgroups. In order to do it, you must include the "/S" parameter in the MSCDEX command invocation on the machine with the drive.

Recommendation: Add the characters "/S" to the line (probably in AUTOEXEC.BAT) that loads MSCDEX, on the PC that has the CD-ROM drive.

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