This section describes how to enable Hal to run before you log-in to Windows 95 and contains information about editing the Windows 95 Registry.

Warning: You are strongly advised to make backup copies of your Windows 95 Registry files before attempting any of the following steps.  If you damage your Registry Windows 95 may fail to load.  (The Registry files, SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT, are hidden files in the Windows 95 directory.)

To enable Hal to run before the Windows 95 user login box you first of all need to alter the following entry in the Windows 95 registry;

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/WINDOWS/CURRENTVERSION/NETWORK

REAL MODE NET

and set

AUTOLOGON=00

For more information about how to edit the Windows 95 Registry, view the "Changing Keys And Values" on-line help topic in the Registry Editor program (REGEDIT.EXE).

Finally, you have to put Hal into the Windows 95 Startup group along with NET.EXE (which Windows uses to log you on to the network).

This is the only way to do it with Hal.  If you try to run Hal as a Windows 95 service from the "RunServices" branch of the registry, it won’t work, as not enough of Windows 95 has initialized to allow Hal to start properly.   However, you can use this method with Lunar.