Problems Sharing Files Between Vista & OS X Leopard

[cjohnson]

Hi. I'm running into problems sharing files between my Vista desktop and my MacBook. In particular, I want to use files on my MacBook from Vista. I have file sharing turned on on both computers, with the Mac set to use SMB. From the Windows box, if I go to Network from the Start button, I see the icon for Riemann (the laptop), but when I click on it I get an error message saying "\\RIEMANN: Can not find RIEMANN. Check the spelling or contact your network administrator" (or something along those lines).

Not really sure what else to try... I've been following all the guides I see online if I google for "sharing files between vista and os x".

Any ideas?


Thread moved from Software For Windows to Operating Systems.

AnandTech Moderator
mechBgon

 

[ViRGE]

Try going by IP address instead of name.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
Try going by IP address instead of name.

aye, use \\ipaddress.

Also Windows has the necessary ports blocked on it's firewall by default. Enable file and print on the firewall.

 

[cjohnson]

I get the same error message if I use the IP address, but '\\RIEMANN' is replaced by '\\192.168.1.3'. File and Print Sharing is checked in Windows Firewall. Also, I don't know if this matters or not, but for the Windows machine to "see" the MacBook at all, I had to add my router as a WINS server on the Mac.

 

[Smilin]

Sorry, I thought this whole time you were going from the Mac to the Windows, not vice versa.

In your case the culprit pretty quickly becomes the Mac. Having to add a WINS server indicates netbios broadcasts are being either blocked or ignored. Two machines on the same subnet should never require a WINS server.

Make sure TCP 139 and 445 are open (for the local subnet) on your Macs firewall for SMB.
Make sure UDP 137 and 138 are open for NetBIOS Datagram traffic...to avoid WINS


As some basic troubleshooting be sure to scope the problem down some:
Does Windows to Mac fail or just Mac to Windows?
Does Windows to Windows work?


As a reference:
832017 Service overview and network port requirements for the Windows Server system
http://support.microsoft.com/d...x?scid=kb;EN-US;832017

 

[KeyKeeper]

ctrl click the folder you want to share, select "get info", click the padlock on bottom right of window that pops up, enter admin password, then mod the sharing restrictions for "everyone". Another thing to check is in your smb share selections section in system preferences, make sure that you have "read/write" set to the public folder for your user account.