Mac on windows network
 

afternoon all

got myself a nice new Macbook in the states while on holiday recently and aswell as getting to grips with the enivitable change of OS i'm hoping to move relevant files across one to the other over my wireless network.

Router Linksys Wag354g, latest firmware
Windows XP desktop
Macbook OSX 10.4.9

Have shared the C drive in its entireity on the Xp machine on the network and have managed to get the MAc to join the "workgroup".

So far i can see all the 'top tier' of files on the C drive on the Mac but if i try to navigate beyond for example Documents and Settings to my personal MyDocuments folder where i have everything i cant get any further.

Not finding the Mac Os particularly strange to use but this is a little frustrating.

your suggestions please.

Re: Mac on windows network
 

Have you enabled sharing for the folder you want to get to?

Re: Mac on windows network
 

.......as well as the enabling the C drive in its entireity?

i can't even see the other shared folders on the network never mind the ones i want, but in reply no i haven't enabled sharing on the specific folder.

Re: Mac on windows network
 

can you see the mac drives on xp (I know nothing about mac) perhaps you could go the other way

Re: Mac on windows network
 

.....actually haven't tried it that way around. I'd probably only see the machine but not the public folders on the mac as i know i haven't enabled sharing from the Mac side.

Re: Mac on windows network
 

I just had a look on my Mac, but I'm struggling to connect to any of my windows machines. It can see the NAS drive allright though... :shrug:

---------- Post added at 16:30 ---------- Previous post was at 16:28 ----------

There is a shared folder in the users (HD -> Users) directory. You might be able to stick your files in there?

Re: Mac on windows network
 

oh aye there's a shared folder on the Mac side but i'm tryin to move files TO the Mac from the pc, so its the windows files i need to see.

i've obviously googled it and they talk of Finder/Go/Connect to Server/ and then type smb/ipadress of target pc/name of folder

but there's no joy there either.

There's been a couple of processes here whereby Macs mantra of 'it just works' itsn't quite so true.But it is a beautiful machine and i will grow to love it i know.

Re: Mac on windows network
 

Is there a way to let network users change/add files on the MAC? This way you could sit at your XP machine and simply drag them to the MAC.

Re: Mac on windows network
 

thats a good idea, aproach it from the XP side with the sharing folder on the MAc enabled.

Re: Mac on windows network
 

Well, I'd like to help, but windows won't see my mac on the network, and my mac sees my windows pc's but refuses to connect as the 'alias cannot be found'. One thing which might help though (saw this on the web), to connect from the mac and typing the full address/path to the shared folder you want to connect to.

Re: Mac on windows network
 

don't u love that 'alias' message even though i haven't a scooby what it means..........and yes i've tried the address of where i want to go to and no joy........i shall soldier on.

Shouldn't have started this thread on a Saturday in such good weather!!

Re: Mac on windows network
 

Yes, that alias message is great. I tried 'fix it' and then it asked me which program I wanted to use to open the alias. Yeah right. Most useful :D

Re: Mac on windows network
 

is ur Mac ur main machine, was just going to pick ur brain bout accomplishing the move from Outlook to Entourage?

Re: Mac on windows network
 

wish I thought of that ;) thats what I meant by other way round. Does mac see udf dvd format? maybe dvd rw is the way to go ?

Re: Mac on windows network
 

It's a work laptop actually. I bring it home when I want to do some work at home that I need the Mac for. I have it connected to the web and my NAS drive, which is sufficient for what I want, so I have very little experience in actually moving stuff across.

Re: Mac on windows network
 

@ zinglebarb, i'm not sure what it can and can't see media wise, but its the latest version of Tiger all updated so one would hope.

@ danielf, fair enough, i'm sure there will be a eureka moment when i can visualise in my head how Mac works. Always coveted one but wary for a long time and some reserch before buyiing and frankly i was bored with windows.

Re: Mac on windows network
 

... and those processes are all ones involving Windoze, eh? A system is only as good as its weakest component. ;)

This is from the Mac's own Help system:

I've never connected to a Windows machine (except through Virtual PC but that was all set up as part of the installation process so I don't know how it did it).

I do suspect however that sharing at the level of the drive itself might be the issue. Have you experimented with sharing a specific folder yet?

Re: Mac on windows network
 

I'm guessing that the share for C: is the default administrative share? If so, then this doesn't work.

What you need to do (and to make it easier, turn off simple file sharing in the folder options) is share individual folders that you want to transfer data from.

To connect to the shares to transfer the files, click go/connect to server (or shortcut command+k) and type smb/ipaddress

the default windows workgroup is WORKGROUP so leave that as is (unless you have changed it) and enter the user details. This then brings up a dialogue box from where you can select which shares you connect to...

Re: Mac on windows network
 

@ kfridge/Chris T

ok i'll reduce the size of the share down to the folders i want.

the workgroup name is changed but on the mac aswell.

simple file sharing is turned off and afaik i'm sure i've also turned off any firewall options in the Advanced pane.

the pics are a great help

Cheers guys this straightens the process out better and although i've seen some of those insructions before on the site they came from, its always better to have people who've done it tell u.

Will let u know Ta

Re: Mac on windows network
 

no probs...let me know if you still have problem...i have this set up as home for occasional file transfer

Re: Mac on windows network
 

how do you read to?;)

Re: Mac on windows network
 

edited my reply as you are connected via smb so the ntfs issue, isn't!

Re: Mac on windows network
 

did you hear the one about write only memory ;)

Re: Mac on windows network
 

:D

Re: Mac on windows network
 

Yeah right, blame windoze... When I need to copy from one mac to another at work, my machines will frequently not find the others. A can see B but not the other way round. Try blaming that on windoze...

And why is this wonderful OS so crap at timekeeping? I've on many occasions overwritten a file 10 times over an hour, yet the time stamp remains unaltered. Very handy if you rely on the time stamp to choose between files :dozey:. Only if you actually click on the item in a directory does the time stamp get updated. If you're lucky a time-ordered directory in another application will follow suit, but that's if you're lucky...

OS-X is nice-ish, but my bug-list of OS X is quite a bit longer than my Windoze bug-list. And I've been using both of them for quite a few years.

Re: Mac on windows network
 

Its nice to see someone who has to use Mac actually give a veiw on it from a none fanboy perspective :)

Re: Mac on windows network
 

Indeed it is...I've been using both Mac's and PC's for quite a while and they both have their good and bad points. Personally I can't be doing with those that have a need to diss either platform just for the sake of it, in my experiece those that do have rarely spent any time eith the platform they have a gripe with!

Re: Mac on windows network
 

afternoon all

well this morning it worked. It seems a more scalpel approach to moving files is the way to go. I would have like to be able to browse where i wish on my own hard drive but c'est la vie.

so all thats left is to move my favourites, my email and link the mac to the xp laptop connected to the printer. wee buns.

Re: Mac on windows network
 

Bucket, which windows version you running??? As I've got similar problems but this is to Vista ;) and vista together with Samba (which is the MAC file sharing system) do not want to connect at all to eachother.

Mac to XP SP2 works fine for me I nicked 10gb of mp3's from my missus' machine.

Re: Mac on windows network
 

its XP SP2 Home on the desktop and Pro on the wife's laptop. Wish u luck with Vista. Another reason i took on the mac, didn't have the patience to wait until the first service pack makes it a little more reliable and compatible with hardware.

what result have u got specifying the ip on the mac of the Vista machine ur connecting to?

Re: Mac on windows network
 

I use Macs and PCs (Win XP Pro) extensively at work. In my experience, I've found that the PCs can see the Mac shares more reliably than the other way around.

On the Mac, I use Sharepoints which makes it a lot easier to share specific folders or complete volumes:

http://hornware.com/sharepoints/

On the PCs, I run into all sorts of problems where one won't see the other even though it worked fine the day before, yet a different PC will see the share fine. One thing I found when on the Mac trying to access a PC share was it wouldn't work because I had changed the XP user name at some point in the past. Using the current user name just hit a brick wall so I had to use the original name, as found in C : Documents and Settings.

If you want a Mac to connect to the PC everytime you log in, type the following in Script Editor, replacing the relevant info:

tell application "Finder"
mount volume "smb://domain;username:password@IPaddress/sharename"
end tell

Then Save As, format=Application, untick Startup Screen and save this somewhere suitable. Then go to System Preferences->Accounts and add this newly-created application to your login items.