Connect to Windows PCs via name from Leopard

cpharvey

Registered
I just upgraded my MBP to Leopard and the first thing I noticed was I'm now unable to mount windows share's by their name.

Before in finder I'd hit ctrl+k and then smb://machinename/share

If I try that now it never resolves. If I use the IP it'll work but one of the things I read, and in fact one of the reasons I just bought Leopard was the supposed easier use of integrating into Windows networks.

I'm wondering if there's something that didn't get turned on or even something I'm supposed to configure before it'll work. I really don't want to have to remember IPs all the time and this is a backward step from Tiger.

Any ideas?
 
Well the good news is I've found one solution to one part of the problem.

The first issue I was having is that under System Preferences/Network/WINS I couldn't get the Workgroup name to stick. I found that if I deleted the entire network, in this case "aircard" and recreated it, I could change the name and it stuck. I did this for both aircard and ethernet and now I have the correct hostname and workgroup setup. I also confirmed this by looking in the smb plist file.

Having done that however I still can't see any Windows shares.

I do suddenly see my own computer but I can't connect to it, it just fails. I've tried turning my own sharing off and still i see my own machine which is really weird.

Any help?
 
New location = yes
WINS server = Any valid IP in your network
Set workgroup name to match Windows PC
Try to connect = Connection failed
Click on "connect as" will drop an authentication box so enter windows user details and you should be able to see the PC shares.
How to automatically offer your local Mac user ID so you don't have to authenticate = don't know, wish I did
 
This topic is an on-going issue with just about every leopard installation. I've got the same problems, however, I've also read that in System Preferences > Sharing > File Sharing > Advanced, there is a problem with leopard using both AFP and SMB for file sharing.

It gets confused. This is a huge backwards step in leopard, and hopefully they will resolve this in the next update, perhaps 10.5.2

On one network, I can see windows shares no problem, like I've mentioned in my other posts, but cannot for the life of me connect/authenticate, and periodically the pc names show up in finder.

good luck
 
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