# Installing WinVN

Information You Will Need

The name or IP address of your news server.

A username and password, if required by your news server. Contact your news provider if necessary. See Authorizing Yourself to the News Server.

If you plan to send mail using SMTP, the name or IP address of your SMTP mail server.

If your news server or mail server has SSL capabilities you will need the OpenSSL libeay32.dll & ssleay32.dll dynamic link libraries (DLL) installed in the WinVN program folder or in your Windows directory. You may be able to find these at www.slproweb.com. You will need 32bit builds for 32bit versions of WinVN, and 64bit builds for 64bit operating systems using 64bit builds of WinVN.

Unzipping WinVN
Create a directory in which WinVN is to be installed (i.e. c:\winvn). Unzip the distribution files into this directory using winzip or 7zip or a compatible decompression program.

Installing WinVN from an installer
Double-click the installer file and follow the instructions in the Installation Wizard.

Filling In Communications Information
Start WinVN. You may wish to add a WinVN icon to a group in the Start Menu if you installed it manually.

You will be prompted for the location of the WinVN.ini file. Select an existing file or create a new one. By default, configuration information is written to the file WinVN.INI in a WinVN folder under the User's AppData Folder. (Use the Windows Run command box and enter %APPDATA% to find this folder.)

You will also be prompted for the newsrc file location. This is the file WinVN uses to store the list of groups and the articles you have seen. It can be located in the same place as the WinVN.ini file, or at another location on your computer. The path is stored in the WinVN.ini file in either a relative or absolute manner depending on it's location. If stored on the same path, the relative path means the newsrc can be moved from computer to computer without having to specify the file each time WinVN is run, even if the drive letters or path changes. It makes it convenient to used WinVN on a removable USB drive.

Next you will be prompted for your NNTP News Server address and some other information. The only required field is the NNTP Server name. You only need to fill in the username and password fields if your news server requires them. Additionally, if you plan to use mail, select MAPI if you use the Microsoft Mail system or some other MAPI compatible mail system, otherwise select SMTP and enter the address of your mail server. See Configure Communications.

Filling in Personal Information
Next, you will be prompted for your personal information, such as name, E-mail address, and organization name. This information is used to identify you when you post an article or send a mail message. See Configure Personal Info.

Note this information can be changed later from the Configure Menu in the main window.

{outdated instructions for old versions}

DLL Locations for Windows 3.x 16-bit version
Place wvtb.dll and gwinsock.dll in the same directory as the winvn.exe.
Move (don't copy) ctl3dv2.dll into your \windows\system directory.

DLL Locations for Windows NT3 and Windows 95 32-bit version
Place wvtb32.dll and gwinsock.dll in the same directory as the winvn32.exe.
Move (don't copy) ctl3d32.dll into your \windows\system32 directory.

GWINSOCK.DLL
gwinsock.dll is WinVN's interface to Winsock for Windows 3.x. Some Winsock stacks (for exampleTrumpet Winsock) may exhibit poor performance in conjunction with WinVN's gwinsock.dll. WinVN provides an alternate DLL genasync.dll which may improve performance in such cases. To install the alternate DLL, modify the WINVN.INI file: in the "[Communications]"section, modify "GenSockDLL=gwinsock.dll" to read "GenSockDLL=genasync.dll".

Environment Variables
If you are running Windows 3.x, you will need to set the TZ environment variable.

You may also set the WINVN environment variable See Invoking WinVN.