Mounting a PC on Mac and vice versa

Morley · Jul 31st, 2005, 12:56 PM

I'm sure this one has been answered a thousand times. Please bear with me.

Bell Sympatico has sold me on the Speedstream 6520, faster internet and built-in router. Both machines have access to the net just fine, thank you.

Bell now tells me they don't support router functions. This is a two-computer network, Mac OS X 10.4.2 sitting beside a WindowXP Pro. I've succeeded in placing a working shortcut to the Mac onto the Windows desktop. I'm having difficulties getting the Mac to mount the Windows hard drive. The built-in router (accessed from both machines) is telling me I have two devices connected, their IP addresses and their physical addresses. Clicking on the Network icon on the Mac shows me just one device recognized, the Mac. No PC showing.

On the PC I go to the properties of the hard drive, select Sharing and see that the drive is already set to share on the network, has been given a "share name", and is set to allow network users to change files. Navigating to my personal folder on the PC and examining its sharing properties I see that it too is set to share with a "share name" which is different. Yet the Mac isn't seeing either of them.

Any ideas on how to get the Windows machine to show up on the Mac? Appreciated.

planders · Jul 31st, 2005, 01:04 PM

You wouldn't happen to be running a firewall on the Windows computer that's blocking file sharing, would you?

Norton Internet Security is a frequent culprit, it doesn't seem to be aware that some of us need to retain LAN file sharing while firewalling internet access.

XP's firewall will also block file sharing if it's installed while the PC is hooked directly to the internet.

So, first of all, try deactivating all firewalls to see if that solves the problem. Then reactivate the firewall, ensuring that Windows File Sharing is allowed.

AppleAuthority · Jul 31st, 2005, 01:33 PM

If it isn't a firewall issue, make sure both the Mac and the PC are on the same workgroup. You can check this by going to (on the PC) Control Panel>System>Computer Name. To check this on the Mac, go to /Applications/Utilities/Directory Access. Then check the configuration on SMB/CIFS (you may need to enter your admin password).