Filesharing between Leopard and XP doesn't work

Hi,

I have a network of 3 computers, a Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, and a PC running Windows XP SP3. I had networking working perfectly between the computers until I reinstalled Windows on the PC. Now, my 2 macs do not seem to see the PC on the network.

The 2 Macs see each other perfectly, file/screen sharing works alright and everything is OK. However neither of the 2 macs seem to recognize the PC. I have ran the network setup assistant on the Windows PC, set the workgroup names up correctly between all the computers, enabled file/printer sharing on XP, added the IPs of the 2 macs to the trusted zone on the ZoneAlarm firewall that the PC is running, etc. etc. Nothing I do seems to make it work, and I've tried everything I can think of.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks

Yup, I have several folders shared on the PC. Also, I set up a VNC server on the PC and used Leopard screen sharing to connect to it, and it works fine. I don't get why file/printer sharing doesn't work.

Gonna try and install Bonjour on the PC to see if it makes a difference

Well I tried Bonjour and it didn't make any difference. And yeah I tried connecting manually with smb:// and that just results in the usual connection failed error.

This was all working fine before I reinstalled Windows...

The Windows firewall is off, I have a 3rd party firewall (ZoneAlarm) running, but the home network IP range as set as trusted. Also connecting to the PC's VNC server from the Mac works fine, so I don't think it could be a connection issue...

EDIT: Made SOME progress, enabled SMB sharing on my MBP and now the PC sees the macbook, but the macbook still doesn't see the PC. :O

EDIT2: Even though the PC sees the macbook it won't connect, says that the network path is not accessible

I tried CIFS but it didn't work. Made some more progress though, by coincidence yesterday my ISP's tech came in yesterday and took out all the old modem equipment and stuff and replaced it with all new components.

Now, my PC appears in the "Shared" section of Finder, but when I click on it it says Connecting... and after a few minutes, connection failed. I can feel I'm close here, any suggestions on what to do next?

geoffreak said:

Is your Mac set to the same workgroup as your PC? (under WINS in network settings)

Click to expand...

Yup

Hmm there's nothing in my Keychain that has to do anything with my PC.

I try to click the "Connect As" button in Finder to enter my username and password for the PC but clicking the button doesn't do anything

LouisBlack said:

I can't be of any help I'm afraid but I just thought I'd let you know that I'm in exactly the same position. Macs see each other perfectly but will not recognise the Windows laptop. I can share files through Ftp on the laptop but that's hardly graceful. I have tried all of the steps you have tried and it just seems to refuse to work. Strangely enough it did work once without me changing any settings but stopped as soon as the computers were restarted...

Click to expand...

I actually have made a little progress now, after my ISP installed a new modem/router combo the Macs will see the PC but they still won't connect. I can connect fine via VNC so I'm sure its a sharing protocol issue. I'm gonna try and mess around a bit with XP's file sharing settings to see if I can get it to work, I'll post back if I find a solution.

No success after hours of trying to get this to work. Whatever it is, its an issue with the filesharing protocol (SMB I think) as others like VNC work fine.

Windows fail? yes. But actually as I discovered, its more of a ZONEALARM fail.

I'm running the 3rd party Zonealarm firewall on Windows, and shutting it off cured my issues altogether. Its weird because I added my entire network IP range to the trusted category in the firewall, and it repeatedly blocks connections as I see from the logs. I have no idea why it does this, but I'm downloading an update to see if that fixes the issues

UPDATE: Firewall update fixed it So for those using ZoneAlarm on a network, make sure its up to date, and more importantly, make sure the IP range of all your networked devices are in the Trusted zone.