Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] error starting capture

Note: This archive is from the project's previous web site, ethereal.com. This list is no longer active.

From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 01:52:09 -0800
On Tue, Jan 08, 2002 at 12:57:12AM -0800, Die Spammer !! wrote:
> Windump opened a black DOS window for a split second then closed. I
> could not tell what it did, but I ran it in DOS and it said "Listening
> on SMC1211, Error opening adapter, The system can not find the file
> specified".

Then, as per my mail, this is a WinPcap problem, so you should contact
the WinPcap developers, by mailing to the e-mail address I listed the
information I mentioned.

> I am on cable internet here at home, so I don't think I have many admin
> rights.

Whether you're on cable internet or not makes no difference to whether
you have admin rights - "admin rights" just refers, at least in the case
of Windows NT (NT 3.x, NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP) to the
privileges the account you're logged into has; it doesn't refer to any
privileges you have on your network.

If you're using Windows OT (95, 98, Me), then, as far as I know, there's
no notion of "admin rights" - all users on the machine have the same
privileges on that machine (even if they don't have the same privileges
on some server or servers on your network).

If you're using Windows NT, then the WinPcap FAQ at

	http://netgroup-serv.polito.it/winpcap/misc/faq.htm

says:

	Q-5: Do I need to be Administrator in order to execute programs
	based on WinPcap on Windows NT/2000?n

	A: Yes/no.  The security model of WinPcap is quite poor, and we
	plan to work on it in the future.  At the moment, if you execute
	a WinPcap-based application for the first time since the last
	reboot, you must be administrator.  At the first execution, the
	driver will be dynamically installed in the system, and from
	that moment every user will be able to use WinPcap to sniff the
	packets.

If you have any further questions then, as I suggested in my previous
mail and suggested above in this mail, ask

	winpcap@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

as they, not we, are the maintainers of the WinPcap package, and it's
the code that's actually trying to open the adapter; Ethereal depends on
it, so these problems are WinPcap problems, not Ethereal problems.