At long (censored) last....

[Pelikal]

At last done it. Some of you may remember this posting by me back in Jan/Feb of this year. I was attempting to network my old iMac, 10.3.9, which has many graphic applications I need, to a Windows 7 machine running Home Premium 32bit.

After 10 months of faffing about, today I've finally done it! 10 months for heavens sake...thank you Apple and thank you Microsoft for making it so easy.

I still reckon there is an issue with MS and this version of Win7 which many others have encountered judging by postings on various forums.

Rather than tag this message onto the original thread, I just wanted to thank the contributors here. The other thread was never ended by me with 'result achieved', maybe because it was getting too complicated for me but in the background I've been poking about and eventually put it all together.

The connection is only one way but luckily it's the way that I need it, which is connecting to the PC from the Mac. Trying the other way, from the PC to Mac, I get an "Enter Network Password" message. Nothing I do works for me in this instance. I have no clue whatsoever what my network password is! I'm not too worried as I have what I want. Would still like to know though.

Anyhow, thanks Mixture, SD, Mike B and others for the encouragement and info. I'm out of work and have no funds for replacement machines so this breakthrough was vital to explore my working-from-home ideas. If any of you are ever in Tring, you are welcome to a beer on me.....cheers

[mixture]

I vaguely remember that thread. Good on you for persisting, something which is a valuable trait in the IT industry (the best engineers are the ones who like getting stuck into a toughie and working through the permutations)

Don't think I've ever been to Tring, heard of it but just had to check where it was on Google !

[Pelikal]

Mixture, there is a fine brewery in Tring and a rather unique Museum, that is if you are into stuffed animals (ok, there is more than that there).

A couple of links that made me look at this whole networking issue again, particularly this MS forum.

And on a Mac forum.

I found it difficult in that some indicated solutions worked for some and not for others. I just had to try a few things till something worked, which it did for me eventually. Sorry, gone a bit link mad, I guess I'm a bit excited.....

[Pelikal]

Enter Network Password

Okay, I'm back again. Quoting myself from above:

The connection is only one way but luckily it's the way that I need it, which is connecting to the PC from the Mac. Trying the other way, from the PC to Mac, I get an "Enter Network Password" message. Nothing I do works for me in this instance. I have no clue whatsoever what my network password is! I'm not too worried as I have what I want. Would still like to know though.

I've now decided that I do wish to connect to the Mac from the Win7 machine and nothing works for me. I'm convinced this is an issue with this version of Win 7 trying to connect to machines other than another Win 7 using a homegroup.

I've tried using another account that exists on both machines with identical passwords.

I've tried toggling Password Protected Sharing, that makes no difference.

The Firewall is turned off completely when connected to the Mac.

I even wondered if the machine thought I was trying to connect wirelessly (which I'm not) and so entered my hub key details! No deal.

The only passwords on the Mac are the login ones, no passwords related to networking that I'm aware of.

If I'm stuffed on this one then so be it.

[mixture]

Pelikal,

Can't remember if I asked you this before but have you checked System Preferences -> Sharing.... maybe you can try an alternative method such as FTP ?

[Pelikal]

Mixture, thanks.

FTP Access is enabled on the Mac. Still reckon it's some MS sh!te with Win7.

[Mike-Bracknell]

Originally Posted by Pelikal

Mixture, there is a fine brewery in Tring and a rather unique Museum, that is if you are into stuffed animals (ok, there is more than that there).

Having been born in Hemel, I'm well versed with Tring and have visited the museum on a couple of occasions as a field trip. Indeed, my school used to borrow the ghastly-coloured (yellow, brown and purple) Tring School Bus for field trips.

I also got my most recent parking ticket there when tendering for the girls' school IT contract.

So, apart from the brewery and museum, there IS the bypass now

[Mike-Bracknell]

Originally Posted by Pelikal

Mixture, thanks.

FTP Access is enabled on the Mac. Still reckon it's some MS sh!te with Win7.

Windows basically requires some credentials to connect to itself or to others. There is no concept of "it doesn't require any credentials". Hence the 'guest' account, which if you enable it and set a blank password has the same effect of authenticating people without ostensibly providing the credentials.

Credentials on Windows are in the form <domain>\<userid> and they have a password associated to each user. <domain> in this case is either the name of a domain the computer is attached to, or the NetBIOS name of the machine itself if in a Workgroup.

All bets regarding connecting into a Windows PC are off if the firewall is going to block you though, so ensure that's off for the time being in order to ensure nothing's going to be silently dicking with your ability to troubleshoot this.

HTH.

Cheers
Mike.

[Pelikal]

I also got my most recent parking ticket there when tendering for the girls' school IT contract.

Clearly something delayed you! Sorry about your parking ticket. I will have a play with a Guest account, this rings a bell from my pre-press days.

[mad_jock]

If its any consolation tere are seasoned pros who have admitted defeat trying to get apple OS's talking to PC's and Vice versa. Especially in the days before Linux kernel.

I can remember sticking a screw driver through an apple talk connector just so we didn't have that hassle to deal with.

Are you using a samba share on the mac?

Sorry I only know the Linux side of things I don't know if there is another way of doing it on the Mac.

[cattletruck]

Still reckon it's some MS sh!te with Win7

It is.

It's been a while, but you have to look at the problem in Samba terms (CIFS shares). I recall Win7 upped/changed the password and security levels as Samba of old used to try several password case folding permutations which now longer work for windows.

If the W7 puter is in a Windows domain as there may be a default policy to block all connections from machines that are not participating in the same domain.

The secret now is you have to connect to your shares specifying a username for the host that is hosting the share.

\\user@host\sharename

But wait, it can only get worse with an alternative syntax (I'm guessing the syntax for specifying the domain here as I forgot it).

\\user:domain@host\sharename

When the share login/password popup pops up Microsoft in their false wisdom will cache your first attempt at connecting - whether successful or not - which will further drive you mad.

You can specify a domain in this login screen, but if you're not using domains then stick a solitary \ in front of your username to ensure the W7 CIFS protocol doesn't do something that is barely documented.

It's crazy stuff (actually I enjoyed it when I was doing it), but it aint for the faint hearted as it requires a lot of knowledge of how the revised Windows security works, to Microsoft's credit I actually agree with what they have done to improve it.

[cattletruck]

I should also add that on both the Mac and the W7 machine you can use the "net" commands on the command line (the syntax differs between each OS) rather than the GUI, this makes troubleshooting a little easier.

On your W7 box type "net use /help" for a bunch of options including being able to specify a FQDN as a target host rather than a WINS/NetBios hostname. I can't remember if it works with an IP address, I got a feeling it doesn't.

Make sure the host name you use can be pinged, and try "net view \\yourmachost" to see if the advertised shares are even visible.

[mad_jock]

That's the stuff I was about to launch into.

Its all to do with your conf file for samba.

And reboot your windows machine between attempts to connect.

[Keef]

This may or may not help, but I had serious problems when I "assumed" that a Home Network was what I wanted in my Home. The laptop crashed (reasons unknown) while it was connected to the desktop via the Home Network. That locked all the drives on the desktop, which would no longer even start.

12 or so hours of cursing later (using the laptop to browse the web), I ended up reinstalling Windows on the desktop. Happily, it kept all the stuff installed on the PC (apart from the pesky Home Network).

I set up a Work Network and it's behaved immaculately. It even allowed me to network with an older PC running Linux, although I've given up on Linux now.

So, if you're trying to connect a Mac to a Win Home Network, and if you can, I'd try a Work Network.

[Pelikal]

Thanks all for the latest pointers. As a novice, there is clearly a lot more I need to absorb. By the sound of it, I've done pretty well to get as far as I have!

I'm going to toodle off for a day or two and see how I get on.

[Mike-Bracknell]

Originally Posted by cattletruck

On your W7 box type "net use /help" for a bunch of options including being able to specify a FQDN as a target host rather than a WINS/NetBios hostname. I can't remember if it works with an IP address, I got a feeling it doesn't.

Since Win2K you have been able to use an IP address or FQDN in a SMB mount. WINS has also been depracated for the same amount of time (although many companies still insist they need it....which 99.99999% don't)

[cattletruck]

Since Win2K you have been able to use an IP address or FQDN in a SMB mount.

Could be true, but I think (sorry for being vague as it's been a while) that at the Windows security level if the FQDN host name cannot be resolved from the IP address then the login won't be authorised to proceed. But he's going the other way (W7 to Mac) so depending on how the mac is configured that limitation *may* not be an issue.

Typical of these sorts of problems his issue I feel is that the Mac's Samba hasn't been configured to use a suitable security mode (files, ldap, ads, and some others I can't remember), and his W7 machine's requests aren't presenting the correct credentials for the security mode used on his Mac, that is, I bet his W7 machine is sticking the workgroup in front of the username.

Samba doco is all over the place literally, and hard for a novice to understand. As I said before it aint for the faint hearted.

Life could be made simpler by just running Filezilla (FTP with an explorer look and feel).

[Pelikal]

Folks, just to let you know I'm still trying out a few of the above suggestions and I haven't gone away. The Mac actually connects beautifully to the PC now. Why do I want to do it the other way around? Dunno is the quick answer!

Still puzzled to heck what this Network Password stuff is all about. Anyhow, cheers for now.

[Pelikal]

Just one bit of info. I pinged the Mac from the PC. 4 sent, 4 received, 0 lost so that looks ok.

cattletruck

and try "net view \\yourmachost"

Ok, did that. System error 5. Access denied .

[Pelikal]

Well, buggah me, can now connect to Mac 10.3.9 from Win7.

Ok, done it folks!

Phew!! It was changing a security/authentication setting in Win 7. “Network security: LAN Manager authentication level” to “Send LM & NTLM – use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated”, this was alluded to in the above postings.

I found it in this doc. As I have Home Premium, I altered the value in regedit, did a restart. Opened Network and there was my Mac, as before. I really didn't think much was going to be different. Anyhow, double-clicked and window requested my name/password. This was accepted, to my astonishment, unlike previous attempts. New window opened showing shares and voila!, my Mac.

Did a total shutdown and reboot all around to test. Still had to enter password etc but this time I checked 'remember credentials'. Yup, shares available as before. Upon third reboot, a double-click on my Mac icon leads me straight to my shares without having to enter anything. WOW...actually very neat.

Thanks again to all of you! I included the link, just in case it may help plus it keeps it all in one place for future ref. Hope that's ok. I'm having a job believing I've finally done this, I really am.....