Newbe question regarding Finder: Sharing Files & Applications Folder

[slumpey326]

I am a newbe to the macbook pro world and have 2 questions pertaining to the Finder feature. I check around the forum and online already and couldnt find these questions so can someone please assist and be gentle also..


1) Files Sharing
right now I have 2 other computers for my family, a desktop and another laptop, both windows running. I set up the file sharing on the macbook pro to work with these two computers. When I am on either of these two windows computers I can see my macbook pro in their shared network section. But my problem is when I am on my macbook pro, in the finder I see nothing that says "Shared", aka I see neither of these two systems, yet they are on my network. Can I not see non-mac pcs on the finder "shared" section.

2) Application
In the "Places" dropdown on Finder, I see various quicklinks including my specific Home folder. In my specific folder I see are the various subfolders like desktop, documents, downloads, applications, etc. When I click on the applications subfolder here, there is nothing inside it. Yet under the "Places" dropdown in the Finder there is an applications quicklink and when I click on it I see all my applications. Are these both not the same folder.

Please assist.

 

[swiftaw]

1) You need to turn on file-sharing on your PCs
2) There is a main Applications folder in the root directory and an Applications folder in your Home directory. Most (in not all) applications will be in the former.

 

[slumpey326]

1) You need to turn on file-sharing on your PCs
2) There is a main Applications folder in the root directory and an Applications folder in your Home directory. Most (in not all) applications will be in the former.

1) I believe file sharing is "on" on both of the windows pcs because if I am on either of those pcs, I see the other ones. In the Finder sidebar on the macbook pro, I dont even see a "Shared" section. Am I missing something here.

 

[Tiki35]

It's not uncommon to not see the Windows PC's in the Shared sidebar from the Mac.

To connect to your PC's from the Mac, try this:

In Finder, Go menu, Connect to server.
Type smb://pc-ipaddress. Ex: smb://192.168.0.5

You should see a login screen where you enter your username and password for your Windows PC.

You should then see your shared folders available on your PC. After which, the share will be mounted on your desktop of your Mac (like a mapped drive on the Windows side).

 

[slumpey326]

It's not uncommon to not see the Windows PC's in the Shared sidebar from the Mac.

To connect to your PC's from the Mac, try this:

In Finder, Go menu, Connect to server.
Type smb://pc-ipaddress. Ex: smb://192.168.0.5

You should see a login screen where you enter your username and password for your Windows PC.

You should then see your shared folders available on your PC. After which, the share will be mounted on your desktop of your Mac (like a mapped drive on the Windows side).

I am sorry but I dont see menu in Finder (found this, never mind). Also which IP address to list exactly and where do I find this, the pcs running windows or the network that all of mine are on

 

[Tiki35]

The "Go" menu in Finder which is in between "View" and "Window"

Enter the individual IP address of the Windows PC you want to connect to.
If you are unsure of its address.
Go Start, Run, and type cmd
Type ipconfig
Your IP address will be listed there.

 

[slumpey326]

The "Go" menu in Finder which is in between "View" and "Window"

Enter the individual IP address of the Windows PC you want to connect to.
If you are unsure of its address.
Go Start, Run, and type cmd
Type ipconfig
Your IP address will be listed there.

got it working, you rock!!!!!!

I now see the two shared pcs listed now under "Shared". My question is that is says the IP address not the name that I have assigned to those computers. Is that correct. Is there a way to list the name instead of the IP addresses.

 

[Tiki35]

Glad I could help.

Yes, you can also enter the command by the PC computer name too.
For example: smb://pc-computername.
However, sometimes this does not work well between PC's and Macs.

On my network, in the Connect to Server dialog box, I just click the plus sign and add the smb://pc-ipaddress to my list of Favorites so it's easy to connect to in the future.

 

[slumpey326]

Glad I could help.

Yes, you can also enter the command by the PC computer name too.
For example: smb://pc-computername.
However, sometimes this does not work well between PC's and Macs.

On my network, in the Connect to Server dialog box, I just click the plus sign and add the smb://pc-ipaddress to my list of Favorites so it's easy to connect to in the future.

it worked, I now see the two names. I had a problem with one, but just needed to turn off homegroup since that one was a windows7 pc. Now I see both of them.

Again, you rock!!!! and I love my macbook pro.