Net.exe and Net1.exe

Why there is a net.exe and net1.exe on Windows? They look the same.

4 Answers

I have got Windows 2000 installed on a virtual machine and can confirm that it has both net.exe and net1.exe and I just installed Windows 95 and can see it only has net.exe

I would like to install Windows NT 4, but can't find the media anywhere.

As Windows 95 only has net.exe and it is a lot larger, I am just going to guess that the reason it is how it is, is simply just compatibility issues e.g. Microsoft thinks that a lot of third party tools use it and do not want to get rid of the tools.

I would guess that net.exe is the newest version and when a old feature is called, it passes it to net1.exe - however, this is just a guess based on the way Microsoft does compatibility in some other tools.

According to the following link:

the difference between net and net1 is:

Only in Windows NT and Windows 2000 was there a difference in the net command and the net1 command. The net1 command was made available in these two operating systems as a temporary fix for a Y2K issue the net command experienced.

This Y2K issue with the net command was corrected before Windows XP was even released but you'll still find net1 in Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 10 to maintain compatibility with older programs and scripts that used net1 when it was necessary to do so.

Examining the two files in Windows 7, I can only tell you that net1.exe has more dependencies that don't appear in net.exe:

• dsrole.dll
• logoncli.dll
• netapi32.dll
• samlib.dll
• ntdsapi.dll

On the other hand net.exe has some unique dependences not appearing in net1.exe:

• mpr.dll
• iphlpapi.dll
• credui.dll

I hope that helps somehow.

A quick google search came up with these results. I'm sure if you spent 5 minutes you could get even more details. Please try that next time