Mac laptop not seeing PC over wireless network

[CunningWard]

Back at my parents house, my dad had an older Linksys Wireless G router where I would be able to see all of the other WinXP computers on the network along with their associated shared folders/drives/peripherals in the 'shared' tab on Finder's left side navigation pane. Since it's old, and my father doesn't fix what isn't broken, he doesn't remember how he set that up.

I'm looking to replicate this with my WinXP desktop and early 2008 MBP. I have a WRT310N Linksys router and WinXP SP 3. I've tried nearly everything, but the ease and simplicity of my dad's set up required nothing on the Mac side, whereas I'm seeing a lot of network configuration for most other methods.

On a side note, I'm hoping this will help me wirelessly connect an external HDD so that I can back up my MBP without connecting my USB Exteranal HDD to it ever night.

Hopefully I've provided enough information, let me know if you have any hints, tips or suggestions. Thanks!

 

[webgoat]

make sure both computers are on same network, enter pc workgroup name in WINS tab on mac within system preferences network advanced section, and finally make sure you actually have a folder or volume on the pc that is set to be shared


all else fails just use finder's connect to server and connect to smb://ipaddressofyourpc

 

[CunningWard]

make sure both computers are on same network, enter pc workgroup name in WINS tab on mac within system preferences network advanced section, and finally make sure you actually have a folder or volume on the pc that is set to be shared


all else fails just use finder's connect to server and connect to smb://ipaddressofyourpc

This does work. But I like the auto mounting of the other network I mentioned. And like I said, it required nothing on the Mac side of the computer, it just all showed up automatically.