Networking newbie baffled!

[peeeete]

Hi,

Am the proud owner of a new ibook and v impressed so far. I need to network the mac to my existing pc though: a daunting task i fear!

Although I'm loathe to ask for help on a topic I know must be posted a great deal, I have followed this thread to no avail: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/54704/

I have succesfully managed to connect both the PC and mac to connect to the internet via my Airport Express router no probs. the probs started when i tried to connect the two machines, following from instructions in the thread above. I have set everything up according to the instructions, but neither machine can find each other when i come to typing ip addresses.

have tried pinging the pc from the mac but there is no reponse. weird thing is, before i tried playing around with all this, itunes could find my shared music and play it from both machines. now it can see the link to my shared music but can't play it.

am very confused!

couple of points i wonder may be relevant:

1. i'm using 3rd party (belkin) sotware with my usb wireless dongle on the PC. things don't seem to work at all on the PC when i turn it off
2. i have turned off encryption on the airport as the 3rd party software was asking me for hex passwords (??) when i set the password using in normal alphanumeric using the mac.
3. i have foolishly tried some of the windows xp wizards to set up networks.

have got to say this all seems incredibly hard considering that apple market the machines on being able to share between mac and PC. Or am I missing something obvious. I do not consider myself to be stupid when it comes to this kind of thing, but I'm totally flummoxed!

Help appreciated

 

[paleck]

Hi,

Am the proud owner of a new ibook and v impressed so far. I need to network the mac to my existing pc though: a daunting task i fear!

Although I'm loathe to ask for help on a topic I know must be posted a great deal, I have followed this thread to no avail: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/54704/

I have succesfully managed to connect both the PC and mac to connect to the internet via my Airport Express router no probs. the probs started when i tried to connect the two machines, following from instructions in the thread above. I have set everything up according to the instructions, but neither machine can find each other when i come to typing ip addresses.

have tried pinging the pc from the mac but there is no reponse. weird thing is, before i tried playing around with all this, itunes could find my shared music and play it from both machines. now it can see the link to my shared music but can't play it.

am very confused!

couple of points i wonder may be relevant:

1. i'm using 3rd party (belkin) sotware with my usb wireless dongle on the PC. things don't seem to work at all on the PC when i turn it off
2. i have turned off encryption on the airport as the 3rd party software was asking me for hex passwords (??) when i set the password using in normal alphanumeric using the mac.
3. i have foolishly tried some of the windows xp wizards to set up networks.

have got to say this all seems incredibly hard considering that apple market the machines on being able to share between mac and PC. Or am I missing something obvious. I do not consider myself to be stupid when it comes to this kind of thing, but I'm totally flummoxed!

Help appreciated

I just recently went throught this whole thing when I switched a month or two ago. I will do my best to tell you what I did. My setup is a PowerMac connected via Ethernet to a Windows XP Laptop connected Via Wireless. Once they are both on the network and able to get to the internet, great!!!

1. On the XP Machine create a user whose sole purpose will be for Mac to connect to the windows machine.
2. Now on your xp machine share out any folders that you want shared to the Mac
3. On the sharing settings add your special 'share' user to the permissions for those directories.
4. Last but not lease check how your firewall is set-up

On the Firewall, I am unsure of how to deal with the XP firewall, I used McAffee's which gave me the ability to set a particular IP address as TRUSTED computer. Without that my Mac would just sit there and twiddle its thumbs since the firewall wouldnt let it connect or ping it.

After that you just use the Finder. (I can't remember the exact menu Names) Under to Go Menu there was an option for Connect to Server. Select that option, then type SMB://some.ip.address.here and hit enter. It should pop-up with a login/password almost instantly and what share you would like to connect to.

I've found that the finder doesn't like using Windows' Administrator or Guest accounts and will not use the C$ admin shares that are built in.

I hope this has been helpful.

 

[peeeete]

thanks for the help. i like the idea of setting up a second account, but i'm still not having any joy.. couple of things i don't get:

how do i set share permissions for my new account? have been trying to fiddle around in "computer management" bit of xp from my admin account but can't change anything. have shared my folders, and made sure all sharing things are ticked.

also, what is C$.

am disabling my firewall throughout all this.

thanks again for your help.... am losing hope that i will ever sort this!!

 

[paleck]

thanks for the help. i like the idea of setting up a second account, but i'm still not having any joy.. couple of things i don't get:

how do i set share permissions for my new account? have been trying to fiddle around in "computer management" bit of xp from my admin account but can't change anything. have shared my folders, and made sure all sharing things are ticked.

When you go to the properties of a folder you want to share, either "Share this folder on the network and choose whether network users can change the files. or if there is a permissions tab in the properties window, add that user to the permissions and choose what they can or can't do to that folder."

also, what is C$.

In the Windows world C$, D$, etc are accessible only by an admin user, but those shares allow full access to that drive. For Instance on a windows computer if I were to connect to the \\computer\C$ and I had an administrative account on that computer I could view the entire contents of that drive. As if I were looking at it from My Computer on the other computer that you are connecting to.

am disabling my firewall throughout all this.

thanks again for your help.... am losing hope that i will ever sort this!!

 

[paleck]

These URLs all seem to have pretty good howtos on this subject:
ttp://joelshoemaker.com/computer/mac/wxpfs.html
http://forums.techguy.org/showthread.php?t=370052
http://www.ifelix.co.uk/tech/3001.html

This HowTo is only for the Windows side, but if you have Windows XP you can set user specific permissions on the folders which is what I have done:
http://compserv.uark.edu/internet/filetransfer/fileshare/index_1674_ENG_HTML.htm

 

[peeeete]

thank god! file sharing working both ways now - paleck!

it seemed unchecking the "use simple file sharing" box from my folders option did the trick. I also had to add the macs ip to the trusted zone within my firewall in order to leave that up and ruinning.

in the end it turns out i didn't need to use the seperate xp account.

i hope someone else finds all this useful if they have a similar problem, thanks again for the help, i can now use the mac even more!

 

[Westside guy]

C$ is a Windows administrative share. It's always there - you can't get rid of it.

Edit: Oops, sorry for the dupe - I didn't see that someone had already answered it.

 

[paleck]

thank god! file sharing working both ways now - paleck!

it seemed unchecking the "use simple file sharing" box from my folders option did the trick. I also had to add the macs ip to the trusted zone within my firewall in order to leave that up and ruinning.

in the end it turns out i didn't need to use the seperate xp account.

i hope someone else finds all this useful if they have a similar problem, thanks again for the help, i can now use the mac even more!

HOORAY FOR ME!!! I finally helped someone with a Mac Question and it worked!!!

 

[crachoar]

Ok, easiest way?

Share a folder on the PC. Right-click, go into the sharing properties - share that folder with the network. If you want, allow for other computers to modify that folder - this way, the mac can write and delete files.

Now, go to finder. Apple + K. Type in the network IP of the PC, in this format.

For example: 'smb://192.168.1.2'

Hit enter. It'll prompt you for a password, and ask you which folder to mount (if you've shared multiple directories).

Congrats - networked folders.