Really basic networking help for new mac user

[tillsbury]

Hi there,

Apologies if this is a repeat, but I've got completely stuck trying to access a Windows XP computer from my new MBPr. I've searched for ages through this site and Google, but all responses seem to say either that it doesn't work or degenerate into slanging matches without any real solutions.

I have one MBPr running 10.7.4, wirelessly connecting to my router which serves internet fine. It also allows me to access three other computers on this network (wired) that are running Windows 7. Two of these are on a homegroup, one isn't, but they are all visible.

I have a media computer running XP (professional 32-bit), wired into the router (I checked), on the same subnet. It can see the internet and all other computers, and they can see it, but I can't see it from here. As far as I can see, the only way to connect from OSX to a PC is from Finder/Go/connect to server and then enter smb://media in there. Other computers are visible this way. This one isn't, it says "There was a problem connecting to the server 'media'". Same if I connect with smb://192.168.1.9 (which it always is).

Under finder/shared there are four computers visible, but not Media.

What am I doing wrong? The XP media server is a plain installation of XP with very little on it, running ordinary networking with workgroup WORKGROUP (Mac sharing is set to the same). I have tried creating a special user on the XP machine with the same username and password as this one, but I can't even see the machine never mind anything else. I can ping 192.168.1.9 fine.

Would really appreciate someone helping out with this...

 

[VideoFreek]

Some troubleshooting tips here. Check in particular the XP machine's firewall settings (I'd just turn it off at least temporarily for troubleshooting purposes), and whether you've activated file sharing on it. Have you set up shared folders?

 

[tillsbury]

Yes, thanks for the reply. Much fiddling later and reading of dozens of threads on this problem -- they all just repeat the instructions (set up sharing, SMB stuff, same workgroup, firewalls etc etc) and suggest that it probably should work if you do what it says. Well, it doesn't seem to, and I can't find a single thread on the net that actually ends up with a solution. Except this one, which is that I binned XP and put an old copy of Vista on the media computer in question, and everything bursts into life.

Posting just to save someone else a day's b*gg*ring about trying to get a Mac to talk to an XP machine in a mixed XP/W7 network.

 

[PaulKemp]

OK, but the win 7 machines are able to connect to the XP machine? Just by using the \\computername\ or \\10.0.0.1\

Homework and those features should not impact OS X. The thing that matters is the firewall and the permissions used for the machine. If I'm not mistaken there are two sharing tabs in windows XP, have you set up both of them?