Macs in a Windows environment

[mike31mets]

I started a new job recently and I'm trying to figure out a few things that I'm hoping maybe some of you can help me with. Just so you know this is not by any means a Mac environment, it is predominantly Windows. However there are a few Macs here.

Just so you can get an idea, AD is used here and for network printers there is a Windows print server that's used. This all works easily on Windows, but not so much on Macs as I'm finding out. For the purpose of any advice I'm getting, just assume we're discussing Snow Leopard (OS 10.6).

The first item I'd like to address is getting Macs on AD:
I run the Directory Utility (found in System/Library/CoreServices/Directory Utility) in Snow Leopard and try to mind the machine. I enter my username/password and domain, leaving everything else the same. I try to bind and it gets to step 5 out of 5 with an error message saying "insufficient privileges you must be administrator". This makes no sense to me. When I enter the username, I've tried "domain/username" , "username@domain.com", and "username". The last two give me the same error message, whereas the first cannot seem to authenticate the username correctly. I've been doing some googling and found read something about the OU (organizational unit). I'm not the administrator for the domain, but I do have access to Administrator Tools for AD. Can someone maybe shed some more light on this? Is there something I'm doing wrong?

The second item I'd like to address is getting Macs connected to the print server.
The print server has drivers for Windows XP/Vista/7 in both 32/64 bit. This works great for PCs because all you need to do is just connect to the print server and select your printer and it automatically installs the drivers on your computer. Well on a Mac it doesn't quite work this way. I understand the drivers won't download from the print server. I can't seem to figure out how to access this print server on a Mac and can't add printers from it. Is there any way to get this working correctly?

I've been doing a lot of online searching this weekend trying to find answers to no avail. Any help or guides would be much appreciated.

 

[Winni]

Macs don't work well in a Windows Domain, that's a simple fact of life. You would find it much easier to integrate a Linux system in that Windows Domain.

Anyway, two small hints in answer to your questions:

In order to operate well with Active Directory, your computer needs an account in AD. Only domain/enterprise admins can create such an account, your user account obviously doesn't qualify. However, you should still be able to mount network shares without having a system account in AD - just try to manually mount the file share in Finder and use your domain user name and password there, it should grant you access.

Windows printer servers... Good question. It's been years since I last have to use a Windows print server. Nowadays the printers usually come with their own servers built in so you no longer need to setup a dedicated print server.

However, what I would try is this: Install an appropriate printer driver for the printer that you want to use on your Mac. Then try to add a "network printer" (using the installed driver) and assign it the IP address of the Windows print server. In theory, that should get you there.

Good luck!