Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

jesseneufeld

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 3, 2008
3
0
Hi,

I've got a MacBook Pro running OS X 10.4.11
I recently had to reinstall the operating system and now I can't get my file sharing network to work.
I am trying to connect to a PC running Windows XP.
My router is a SpeedStream 6530.

I have enabled Windows Sharing as well as Personal File Sharing.
I have created a network on the PC called "Mynetwork".
I have turned off my firewall.
Still the pc does not appear in my network tab.
I tried to "connect to server" using smb://"ip address"/"user name"
and all I get is "Could not connect to the server because the name or password is not correct."

What am I doing wrong? This used to work before!
Please help!
 

macrem

macrumors 65816
Mar 11, 2008
1,433
100
Can you also ping the Windows IP from your MBP & vica versa? Maybe your Windows machine refuses to communicate with your MBP unless you set the proper Workgroup and/or Domain in your MBP's network device settings under WINS.

Anecdotal: I configured a Linux machine to be a samba server which could be accessed by Macs and Windows machines. I had to keep messing around with smb.conf until finally Windows acknowledged the server. After each change, the Mac always recognized the the Samba server. Now I have no Windows machines and use a much more secure, encrypted protocol that was so simple to configure. Microsoft made such a finicky protocol, but it's insecure so I don't see the point besides trying to discourage using other OSes.
 

jesseneufeld

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 3, 2008
3
0
Each machine can ping the other. That's why I find this so confusing!
I need to play around with the workgroup settings a bit more, I guess. I read in another post that another user's mac wouldn't recognize the pc unless it was in the default group Mshome. My workgroup was originally called Mshome, but I renamed when it wasn't working. I'll have to try again.

If you have any suggestions, please let me know. I'm currently using a flashdrive to transfer data, and it's quite time consuming!
 

macrem

macrumors 65816
Mar 11, 2008
1,433
100
Aside from the workgroup, you might also be missing this?:
If You're running Tiger (10.4), you will also need to click the "Accounts" button and tick off the box next to your account name so that OS X knows to share out your particular home folder.

Also, try putting the Windows share in place of the "user name":

smb://"ip address"/"windows share"

...otherwise combing through the aforementioned thread will probably get it working.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.