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Can't get Mac & PC to see one another on home network

Buggwrit
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Can't get Mac & PC to see one another on home network

I have a Macintosh G4 running OSX 10.4 connected by wire to my D-Link DSL 2640B router and a PC running XP Home SP3 connected by a wireless link. I would like to be able to set up a local network to share files and resources.
I have carried out the operations detailed in the Plusnet FAQ sheets "Setting up a Windows computer to share files with Mac users" and "Setting up a Mac computer to share files with Windows users" but have been unable to make either computer visible to the other. Do I need to change any settings in my router to get this working? Is this possibly a firewall issue (I am using the free ZoneAlarm firewall on the PC)? Can anyone give me a step-by-step guide to setting this up as I am a bit out of my depth here? Alternatively Is there a tutorial available anywhere for setting up such a network?
12 REPLIES 12
dvorak
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Re: Can't get Mac & PC to see one another on home network

You will need to allow file sharing on both computers. So that is zone alarm on you pc and firewall on your mac. As you are behind a router you can just disable both as a quick test. If that works you know where the issue lies and can tweak the appropriate settings. Let us know how it goes.
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samuria
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Re: Can't get Mac & PC to see one another on home network

Can you ping the other pc by name and by ip?
Both pc's need to be on the same network range check they are both similar ie if one is 10.0.0.2 the other should be the same apart from the last number.
jelv
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Re: Can't get Mac & PC to see one another on home network

<nit-pick> Isn't that dependant upon the subnet mask? If that was 255.255.0.0 on both PC's then surely 192.168.0.1 could talk to 192.168.1.1? </nit-pick>
For home networks you should use a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.
You then need to look at the IP of the router and make sure that the first three parts of the PC's IP address are the same as the first three of the router.
In zonealarm, under Firewall, zones you need to make sure that you have a subnet defined where the first three parts of the IP address are the same as the router and the last part is zero (with the same subnet mask). This needs to be in the trusted zone.
jelv (a.k.a Spoon Whittler)
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Buggwrit
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Re: Can't get Mac & PC to see one another on home network

Thanks for your replies. I've had partial success. After adding a subnet to ZoneAlarm as suggested the Mac can now see and connect to a shared folder on the PC. I still can't get the PC to see anything on the Mac, though, even with both firewalls turned off. If I try to map a network drive to  \\ipaddress\accountname I get a login pop-up but it will not accept the password of the account on the Mac.
Anyway I do at least now have a means of transferring files between the two machines so that's a big improvement.
jelv
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Re: Can't get Mac & PC to see one another on home network

This now looks like a MAC issue - I know absolutely zilch about them never having used one so I'm sorry I can't hep you any further.
jelv (a.k.a Spoon Whittler)
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dvorak
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Re: Can't get Mac & PC to see one another on home network

To transfer things between my mac and PC I use WinSCP, this requires setting up SSH on your mac if you haven't already. http://winscp.net/eng/index.php
I find it much more reliable than using windows explorer to do it.
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Buggwrit
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Re: Can't get Mac & PC to see one another on home network

Thanks adiewoo. I changed the Macs network name and now the PC can see it in Microsoft Windows Network -> Workgroup but the login dialog still rejects the password.
I've downloaded WinSCP and will have a play with it at a later date but for the moment I'm happy that I can use the Mac to do file transfers.
Denzil
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Re: Can't get Mac & PC to see one another on home network

No expert on Macs, but it might well be because Windows does not like reading anything other than Windows file systems (FAT32, NTFS). There are similar issues with Linux. Linux can generally read Windows file systems, but Windows can't read Linux ones.
Buggwrit
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Re: Can't get Mac & PC to see one another on home network

I assume that when I enabled Windows Sharing on the Mac this would handle the necessary translation and protocols. Since the problem is with the login rather than with file access I think it's unlikely to be a file system compatibility issue.
Mind you, over the years I have formed the gut feeling that Microsofts attitude to connectivity is a rather parochial one of 'why would you want to connect to a non-Windows environment?' Where they do attempt to provide connectivity it almost seems to be grudgingly.
dvorak
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Re: Can't get Mac & PC to see one another on home network

Remember your mac username / password is case sensitive.
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Buggwrit
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Re: Can't get Mac & PC to see one another on home network

I assumed that would be the case Cheesy
samuria
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Re: Can't get Mac & PC to see one another on home network

Its a long time since I had anything to do with Macs but I assume the problem will be that when you try and connect you are sending hidden your username on windows. try from a cmd prompt
net use P: \\macip\sharename password /user:username