Accessing Mac from PC in simple ethernet network

hello...

this is a _very_ common topic around these parts - your best bet it so search the current posts and 2k2 archives...you'll find a bunch of good links and discussion in there...

if you can't find an answer to your specific problem, feel free to post back! :-)

sitruc

hello...

umm - that was _Really_ out of left field, but i guess there's three parts to my response:

1. there's probably not a single "answer" to your problem (i.e. is the network cable plugged in)...there are many different potential areas that you can check when it comes to networking computers

2. i currently have a win98, a win2k and a mac osx box happily networked together here in my home network, so i guess that would mean that i do technically know the answer, assuming that your network is not atypical

3. i just went and did a search and there are 87 posts (including this thread) in this forum regarding networking - we have had many people come through and ask about how they can network their pc and their mac, and we have provided numerous links and answers for them. the point of me suggesting that you go search our archives is because there's a good chance that your answer is already in there.

but since you want your answer now and i have little info on your specific setup, i'll guess that perhaps you should check to make sure that you have a specific share set up on the windows box - to do this, right-click on the folder or drive you want to share and choose "properties"...then select the sharing tab and set up sharing for that item. at that point, if it's win98, you will provide a password to connect, and if it's win2k or xp, you'll either have to create a user to access that folder or you can use your existing login...

sitruc

hello...

did you try the part about setting up a share on the win box that i had in there? if you set up that share and then go to your mac and open it via samba:

smb://[box name]/[share name]

you should then be prompted for the username and password...did that work for you?

sitruc

hello...

[Andy Hutchinson] "If I click on the Mac it opens a window saying Enter Network Password. It ask for "Connect as:" and "Password:". Nothing I enter seems to work. "

you'll need to check two things on the mac side - both are in the system preferences:

1. sharing: check that "windows file sharing" is checked

2. accounts: check that the account you're logging in with from the pc has "allow user to log in from windows" checked

[Andy Hutchinson] "If I have four drives on a PC will I have these four drives placed on the Mac desktop? If I have a "C" drive on three PCs, will I have three "C"s on the Mac desktop?"

in windows, you can assign a "share name" to the shared drive - you can set this to be any string you'd like, and then you will see that name when you have it mounted. you could use this to uniquely identify each c drive on each box (or each drive on one box)...

[Andy Hutchinson] "Can't I just click on one of the PC icons in Connect to Server and open it up? "

ya - same thing in the end...after you do it once, you'll have it in the shortcuts and then you can just pick it that way - you'll see the samba url appear in the address. i usually just type it in there directly as i find it to be faster than clicking through in the window...

sitruc

hello...

if you have that auto-login thing enabled, i'd try disabling it during this testing time...i'm not sure what all it might do in this process. maybe disable it, log out and then log back in just to be safe...

then on the pc, perhaps try directly putting in the path - in windows (assuming you're running win2k or xp), put the following in for the folder:

\[mac name or ip address][mac user name]

then it should do the u/p dialog...

does that work? if you're running win98 or 95, then the only way you can login to another box is to have an account on that box with the same name that you run your win98 box under - that's in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINEnetworklogin in the registry, but please do be careful if you start mucking around in the registry... :-/

sitruc

hello...

ya - you have to put the user name as the share (i.e. \macboxandy or whatever your user name instead of andy)...then it will ask you for your username and passowrd, which is the username on the mac box and the password associated with the account...i think i recall you saying that you have setup a password for the mac account, ya? if so, then put that password in...

if you want to test, you can create a new account on the mac box and do all the sharing stuff - don't use auto-login; assign a password to that account and set it up to allow networking from windows. then go back to windows and put the ip or name of the mac and the new user name - say your box is called foo and the new user is bar:

\foobar

then enter foo and the password you set for the account and it should let you in. this is exactly what has to happen - i can recreate this here with my jaguar and win2k boxes, so i know it's what needs to be done...

sitruc

hello...

if you make a shortcut to your video drive and put it in your home dir, you can then get to the drive via that...you'll have all the permission issues that you do on the mac directly (i.e. if you don't have write with the account on the mac, you won't be able to write to that dir from the pc which is connected via that same account)...

and yes - there's a difference between your username (aka the short name) and the full name associated with the account - you'll always use the short name as the username when accessing the box from elsewhere. as to why your original account isn't working, i'd still go with disabling auto-login for that account. worse case, you'll have to choose that account and enter your password everytime you turn on the box, but you shouldn't really need to turn it off anyway. that might help with the remote connects.

sitruc

hello...

yes - like i said...make a shortcut to your hard drive and put it in your home dir - what you are seeing is the contents of your home dir on the mac...when you log in as that user, that's where you go. so if you put an alias to a hard drive in your home dir, you can click on it in windows and it will go there...

sitruc

hello...

[Andy Hutchinson] "On the Mac I dragged the Macintosh HD icon into the Users/andyhutchinson folder. From the PC it doesn't appear as a drive, just some unknown file. I can't access it. "

that is kinda odd - you made a shortut the correct way for the mac, but windows didn't like it (i could recreate that here)...but when i made a symbolic link via the terminal, it worked fine...so open a terminal in your mac and type this:

ln -s /Volumes/[name of drive]/ ~/[name of alias]

where [name of drive] is the name of your video drive and [name of alias] is the name you want the alias to be. it will then be in your home dir and windows should see it...here's an article that talks more about this:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2001110610290643

[Andy Hutchinson] "The second user name that I created has the majority of the folders with red circles on them."

yup - individual users don't have access to other user's home directories (this is how unix and even windows to an extent works). here's a basic link from apple on permissions:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106712

ignore the part about repairing them - they're not broken because the folders have red circles...just get to the part about how unix permissions work. also do search the archives here, as this too is a frequent topic...

if you have any questions about permissions or the aliases, go ahead and start new threads - this one is getting pretty long... :-/

sitruc