I know there are a bunch of MAC people here, and although I bought one for my wife, I'm hopelessly lost when trying to support them........ I just walked into one of our offices, and a new guy has a MAC laptop, and he needs to gain access to our network resources. It was already connected to our network when I walked in, and he can browse the Internet without any problems. What he can't do is connect to our folder shares on the office "server." I use quotes because this is a small field office with a simple windows networking scheme, and the files are stored on Windows XP Pro box. Not a true server. Anyhoo.......I fumbled around on the MAC, and I saw the place where you can view computers on the network. I see all of the laptops in our office, but not the "server." I "think" I know why. All of the laptops are hooked up wirelessly on the WLAN which is a 172-dot network while the "server" is on hooked up via ethernet on the LAN which is a 192-dot network. If I'm correct on this.......how do I get the MAC to see the 192-dot network? I found a place where I can manually "map" to a network on the MAC, but even when I put in the "server's" IP address (192.168.2.61), it simply won't connect. Anyway, I think it is just a case of the MAC (which is on the WLAN) will not see the wired LAN. What do I need to do?
It's not really a server, it's an XP Professional machine that we use as a server. Simple Windows home networking stuff..........I'm just a MAC moron.
I think it does........if I'm reading it correctly, I may not be able to do what I want to do (because it claims I need to have a password setup for the Windows share, and I'm not going to make a bunch of wholesale changes on the network to accomodate one MAC that may only be here for a week or so). Regardless, thank you very much.
Can you ping the server on the wired network from your Mac on the wireless network? If not, it's a network topography issue and not a Mac issue. Otherwise, you should just be able to use the Connect to Server command in Finder and type in the address, e.g. "smb://192.168.X.X/sharename".
I'll describe what I am doing at home and you can tell me if it applies to your situation at all. I have a Time Capsule wireless router. I have a Windows XP, MacBook Pro and iMac on the network. When I look at the time Capsule network, I see all 3 of the computers. In order to see the XP machine on the MACs, I have to select the workgroup via the "WINS" tab on my Time Capsule network settings. Once that is done, the XP machine shows up in Finder on the MACs. I select it and then I can see all of the folders. From there, I need to make sure that the folders on the XP are shareable. I also needed to disable "simple sharing" on the MACs (I think that is where I did it, but I am not able to check right now). Incidentally, the Time Capsule should be irrelevant to this discussion. Any router should have similar settings. EDIT: At no point do I need to enter any passwords.
I can connect to both Mac and PC through WiFi and ethernet in a mixed network. I believe that, for the Mac to automatically detect available computers, you have set you Mac in the same domain as your PCs. You should be able to configure this in the Sharing preference panel. If you use SMB command, you need to specify the correct path if they are in two different domain.
OK.......I don't know how to ping with a MAC, but I know that the windows machines can connect to the server (and have for some time) without any issues. Through the MAC, I can "see" ALL of the wirelessly connected Windows machines on the local network without any issues. All of the wireless machines (including the MAC) are issued a 172-dot address through DHCP. The "server" is NOT wireless; though it is connected to the same router (a sonicwall), the sonicwall is configured such that wired hosts (LAN) are on a 192-dot network--in the case of the "server," it's address is 192.168.2.61. My laptop--for instance--is connected to the same sonicwall router, but it is connected wirelessly--to the 172-dot network. For instance, my IP addy is 172.16.2.159. For some reason, our IT service company insists that the LAN and WLAN have different IP schemes. That being said, it has never been an issue with our Windows machines. Again......I think the issue has to do with the differing IP schemes for LAN and WLAN because the Mac can see all of the wireless hosts (such as itself), but it can't see the wired hosts (like the server). Hope that makes sense, but because bobreck says that he never has to use passwords, I'll keep trying.
The reason you can't automatically see your server on your Mac is because they are on different networks. However, if your wireless PCs can connect to your wired servers, you should be able to manually do the same with the Mac. Follow these steps: 1. Click the Finder icon in the Dock. 2. Choose Connect to Server from the Go menu. 3. In the address field of the Connect to Server dialog, type the URL using this syntax: smb://192.168.2.61 4. Click Connect. To ping from the Mac, open up a terminal and type: ping 192.168.2.61
Guys......I had to leave for a while, so I didn't get to mess with this, but I just got back, and I tried the steps above: smb://192.168.2.61 and it worked perfectly. I had fumbled around myself and found this connect to server dialog box. I had just typed in the IP address, and it appended the front part with something other than smb:// Unfortunately, I didn't write down, but I think it was something like adp:// Anyway, that didn't work, but smb did. It was obviously a very simple solution, but having never really messed with MACs, I didn't know the first place to start. Like I said.........I'm a MAC moron. Thanks again for everyone's help.
