Connecting to Windows shares via Leopard

B. W.

2[H]4U
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Jul 9, 2005
Messages
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I got my first official MacBook today, and so far (excluding an issue with Logitech's Control Center and Growl, which isn't Apple's fault) I'm pretty happy.

But I can't seem to get my Mac to connect to my Windows machine. Ideally, I wanted to be able to connect to it and stream all of my media over (and relying on a VNC server when I wasn't in my home network), but Leopard simply refuses to cooperate.

When I first booted up, I could see my PC, but I couldn't connect (giving me an error saying it wasn't available). Now, for some reason I can't seem to see any Windows shares at all.

I have already tried creating a new location and setting the workgroup to match the PC's, but nothing has worked. I know there are a lot of solutions (which don't seem to work for everyone), so I'm curious if anyone else has had this problem, and what, if anything, have they done to fix it.
 
Welcome to the club! I would try to right click on the dock on the finder icon, (the first one) and hit connect to server, then enter the windows machine IP address. My shares on any computer always auto come up when I click on mac HDD on the desktop. I double click and then the tab on the left shows shares. When I had OSX 10.4 (I guess) it wasn't as smooth as leopard, but now with leopard, its a lot better. I am new to macs so my advice might suck, I will warn you!
Good Luck
 
I can connect (and see my computer in the Finder) after disabling the Windows firewall, but I can't login with my Windows username and password.

Edit: I can log into my account after disabling Simple file sharing, but I can't see any files. So close! :eek:

Edit: Problem solved. I set the drives I had as sharable. Probably not the most secure method, but it works. Thanks for the help!
 
I only share the whole drive on mine, I never just shared a folder. I'm sure there should be a way though...
 
I only share the whole drive on mine, I never just shared a folder. I'm sure there should be a way though...

I have found little glitches like you mentioned in share whole drives like that. I think it's to do with conflicting with the default admin share. I use per-folder shares, and can browse my network just fine in Leopard. Never encountered any of the strange network connection/browsing problems I hear about people having in Leopard.
 
Most of the strange problems people have are probably more of the Windows machine(s) not being set up correctly than it is Leopard not cooperating as has been shown with this thread.
 
Simple file sharing causes problems with more than just Mac OS, it causes problems with virtually all other OSes out there except XP. 2000 and 98 machines have issues connecting to Windows XP Simple file shares. If you create a share and check Read for the Everyone group, your MBP can connect and read it.

My iMac has never had a problem connecting to my SuSE 10.0 datatank and after the XP desktop had the above settings done. I will agree though that Leopard makes it much easier than the hoops I had to go through with 10.3 and 10.4
 
there was a program i used on a hackintosh before i wiped it. forget what it was called though.
 
Simple file sharing causes problems with more than just Mac OS, it causes problems with virtually all other OSes out there except XP. 2000 and 98 machines have issues connecting to Windows XP Simple file shares. If you create a share and check Read for the Everyone group, your MBP can connect and read it.

My iMac has never had a problem connecting to my SuSE 10.0 datatank and after the XP desktop had the above settings done. I will agree though that Leopard makes it much easier than the hoops I had to go through with 10.3 and 10.4

Aha, that may be it then. I always uncheck Simple file sharing on my machines. It just makes everything soooo much easier to manage and headache free.
 
I had a problem with my windows pc's first showing up in finder and then not showing up anymore. It seems to be a known problem with leopard and opening up terminal and copying in some code seemed to fix it. I googled to come up with the exact info.
But it's definately a Leopard issue.
 
Here's what I did... it works now but I can't determine which step exactly worked:

1) installed Bonjour for Windows
2) turned off simple file sharing
3) in Leopard, turned on SMB file sharing (yeah I know we want Windows -> Leopard sharing not the other way but it worked)
4) connected to smb://192.168...

After I did step #4, Leopard magically began to see the Windows computer permanently even between reboots of my Mac.
 
I've seen to run into a new, semi-related problem with my new NAS box.

My NAS is on my network, setup as a Samba server. I can connect to it using the Finder (Command + K) and typing in smb://10.0.1.190. However, I would like to mount the share at login.

I know I can use the Login Items feature under the account preferences, but that forces the Finder to come up every time I login to my account. So here's what I've tried to do:
  1. Edit the /etc/auto_master file in Terminal
  2. Add an entree Network auto.smb
  3. Create the auto.smb file
  4. Add the following text Matt-NAS -fstype=smbfs :Matt:p[email protected]/Matt

In theory, this should mount the Matt-NAS server and place it in the Shares menu in the Finder, but nothing comes up. I have a feeling something may be wrong with the syntax of the auto.smb file, but I'm not sure what. Anyone have any suggestions?
 
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