I can’t tell you how many hours I poured into trying to get my Mac and PC to communicate with each other. It was very frustrating to have to use a USB drive every time I wanted to transfer files from one to the other, but I could never find a good, comprehensive guide as to how to get the two computers to talk to each other through my network. After a great deal of trial and error, I finally figured it out. Here are the steps for setting up file sharing between Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard:
In Windows Vista
- Click on the “Start” menu (the Windows icon) in the bottom left hand corner of the screen
- Select “Control Panel”
- If you are using the “Classic View”, double-click on “Network and Sharing Center”
- If you are not using the “Classic View”, click on “Set up file sharing”, located beneath “Network and Internet”
- While in the Network Sharing Center, click on the small arrow located to the right of “File sharing” and choose “Turn on file sharing”, then click “Apply”
- Go back to the Control Panel
- If you are using the “Classic View”, double-click on “Security Center” and then click on “Windows Firewall” on the left side of the window
- If you are not using the “Classic View”, click on “Security” and then click on “Windows Firewall”
- Once you are in the Windows Firewall window, click on “Change Settings”
- Click on the “Exceptions” tab
- Scroll down and make sure that “File and Printer Sharing” is checked
In Mac OS X
- Click on the Apple Menu (the Apple icon in the top left hand corner of the screen)
- Select “System Preferences…”
- While in System Preferences, click on “Sharing”
- Make sure the box next to “File Sharing” is checked
- While “File Sharing” is highlighted, click the small “+” located beneath “Shared Folders:”
- Choose the desired folder to be shared (it can be just one folder, or an entire account folder)
- Make sure the account that is being shared has “Read & Write” access by clicking on the up and down arrows next to the user name and choosing “Read & Write”
- Click on “Options”, located below the “Users:” box
- Make sure “Share files and folders using SMB” is checked
- Make sure that your user name is checked
- Click “Done”
- Go back to System Preferences (this can be done by clicking “Show All” in the top left hand corner of the window
- Click on “Security”
- Click on the “Firewall” tab at the top of the window
- Select “Set access for specific services and applications”
- “File Sharing (SMB)” should show up in the list of allow services and applications
In Windows Vista
- Go to the “Start” menu
- Click on “Network”
- The name of the Mac machine should show up
- Double-click on it
- Enter the user name and password for the account that is being shared
- There should now be a folder with that user name as a title
- Double-click on this folder
And that’s it!
The firewall on Mac OS X is what caused me so much trouble. Many of the tutorials I consulted failed to mention it, and since my firewall was previously set to “Allow only essential services”, it would not allow file sharing to occur, since file sharing isn’t “essential”.
For some reason, I can only connect to the Mac from the Windows computer, not the other way around. I have tried browsing the my network from my Mac and have even attempted connecting using the “Connect to Server…” option. However, even though I can’t connect to the Windows machine from the Mac, for me, this doesn’t really matter, since if I need a file from the Mac, I can just pull it up from Windows, and if a need a file from Windows, I can just drag it over to my Mac. If you know how to get Leopard to connect to Vista, please feel free to leave a comment explaining how to do so.
I hope this tutorial helps those of you that have been having the same kinds of problems I was having. Please let me know what you think of my instructions and/or if you have any other comments or questions.
Filed under: Apple, Computers, Mac OS X, Microsoft, Technology | Tagged: Mac, PC, Windows Vista, network, Mac OS X Leopard
I had a windows vista 64 and my friend a mac leopard, I had everything right but I still cant see his computer on my network.. I can ping and have a reply of his computer, but cant access or even find, looking by his name…
I need help man….
Hey it workes for me I shared the whole users account!
Leopard to Vista
Heres what I did:
1. Click Go
2. Connect to a Server….
3.Instead of afp:[IP of Vista] replace it with smb:[IP of Vista]
Ex. smb://192.168.1.101
4.Click Connect
5.Walla!!! it should work!
NOTE: Make sure you follow the steps above for “In Mac OS X” written by the author
Awesome. Thank you for doing the grunt work. I followed your steps and it connected first try.
Hi Guys,
I’am trying to figure our the sharing of files works on MacOS X 10.5+ — as it seems very simple to setup, but I have experienced problem. Here is my case. One Windows XP / Vista (same same) connecting to my Document folder on my Mac, via SMB File Sharing. At first no problems, but now I’m getting permission problems where Windows can’t save or change files on the share.
I have found a lot of articles discussing the problem with MacOS and the inherit permission on files.
Have any of you guys any experiences on this or hint?
Thanks to Kyle and r0cks0u7!!!
You guys have both got it right and everything now works perfectly – I can see Mac from Vista and Vista from Mac.
If you have a windows network (workgroup) you don’t have to use use the IP address to connect from a Mac to Vista. When you select sharing in Vista it gives you a file location to email to your colleagues – something like file://COMPUTER_NAME/users/WORKGROUP_NAME/documents. Just copy this link and paste it into the connect to server part of Finder. Change the file:// to smb:// and off you go.
This means that should the IP address of the Vista computer change you will still be able to connect to it.
THANKS! Worked like a charm!
Susan
My fiance and I have been trying for hours to get out comps (his mac and my Vista Premium pos) to network so it would be a lot simpler than how we have been doing it (flash drives and emails and file transfers through yahoo messenger). We followed Kyles advice and it worked….to an extent. He can’t access any of my shared files and every time I try accessing his computer it asks me for a username and password. We tried his user name, both of us removed our log in passwords and still nothing. Any Ideas would be very helpful as we are trying to get our pics and things all together a lot easier and faster than the way we have been going at it.
I was in a similar situation when I was setting up my network; I could see folders on my Mac from my Vista PC, but when I went to open one and typed in my username and password, I kept getting error messages. I even removed my password, like you and your fiance did, but that still didn’t work. What turned out to be the problem for me was the firewall in Mac OS X. Unfortunately, if you’ve already ensured that your Mac firewall is properly configured, I can’t think of any other advice to give you. I hope you are able to get it working.
-Kyle
…there is really only one solution to the Mac OS X Leopard – Vista networking problem, – dump the Mac, return for a full refund and buy a Vista machine. Been tinkering with this problem since Jan. 08 – sometimes it actually works, but most of the time is does not. Can’t afford this horrible waste of time and money in a production environment. Apple seems to have absolutely no idea on how to fix this problem. Running Vista since the early beta without a single hick-up on 4 different machines – Vista just works!
I am having a similar problem. My vista system ocassinally appears in my mac’s (leopard) shared folder. when i click it it says ‘connection failed. the server may be unavailable or it is a wrong ip address.’ i have tried everything to connect but it doesn’t work. I lowered the security levels on my vista PC to allow samba. i am basically trying to connect to a shared printer.
Pls help… i have been losing my mind!!!
Thanks in advance
I definitely know the feeling of trying to get the two computers to talk with each other. If you’re trying to connect to a shared printer, one thing that may help is to install Bonjour on your Vista PC. Of course, I don’t know what your setup looks like. In my case, I have my printer connected to my AirPort Extreme so it can be shared with all my computers. If the printer is connected directly to your Vista PC, unfortunately, I can’t think of what would be causing the problem in terms of your Mac not being able to connect. I hoped that helped and good luck.
The terminology “checked off” is very confusing.
do you mean “checked”
or when you say “checked off” does that mean “not checked”
checked off seems to imply “off”
Hello, I have tried everything under the sun for two days now. I had to do a complete system recovery on my Vista machine (imagine that), and I backed up all my important files to my G5 Power Mac, thinking I could just transfer them back later. After doing the recovery, I set up Vista to see the G5, and it does, but I am unable to log into it. When prompted for a username and password, I enter the username of the Mac account (Joe), and then the password (these are identical on both machines). Then when I click OK, it changes my username to a “computername\username” format, namely “JoePC\Joe”, and says “Logon Unsuccesful: Windows was unable to log you on. Be sure that your username and password are correct. Of course they are not correct, windows decided to change my username for some reason.
Also, on the Mac side, I can “Connect to Server” form the Mac to Vista, mount the entire C drive of the Vista machine, but when I drag the folder with my backup data to the C drive, I get a permission denial teling me I may ned to enter an administrator username and password to complete the action. Then is tells me I do not have sufficient priviledges to complete the action.
Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Both machines are networked through an Apple Airport Extreme Base Station via Ethernet (no wireless).
Thanks,
Joe Mesot.
When I was having trouble connecting to my Mac from Vista, it also changed my user name to [USERNAME]PC/[USERNAME]. Other than setting two separate passwords for the two machines (having the same password shouldn’t matter), I unfortunately can’t think of anything else to try.
Good luck.
-Kyle
To Kyle
I came to the same point.
Had to connect a XP SP3, Vista SP1 to a iMac OS X 10.5.5
1) on The iMac (System preferences, Network, Ethernet advanced configuration, WINS (workgroup i filled in WORKGROUP))
2) on the both windowcomputer under the configuration section, System i filled in the same name for the workgroup (WORKGROUP)
All computer must share the same workgroup wathever the name.
The next great step forwards is to share the disks of these computers.
I opend this computer on the XP pointed to the drive C opend the properties and went to the tab share.
There I shared this drive.
From that momment this shared drive appeared in the WORKGROUP under the XP computer.
I also shared on the Vista the hardrive C and an external drive
I did the same for the printers
So you do not have only to setup on each computer the network you also have to share the printers, drives, or a series of files.
On the iMac appeared under shared the two computers (Xp and Vista)
It is th possible to connect as guest to them or as identified user.
It take some time to the Mac to do this.
I found out I first had to start the network form the Windows computer Using the explorer and then activating the network by cliking on it.
I did this with the both computers. Strange is they appeared not directly on the iMac but after some minutes suddenly they were both there.
I do not know if it does something but I turned also in the sharepane the extrenan management on and under computer options I swiyched the status indicator on so he appears in the upper workbar.
I am just that far. I hope it will all be still there tomorrow.
Hope some of you find some usefull items in what I experienced.
Marcel.
It is all still there and it works.
I might have forgotten to tell I created on both Vista and Xp portables a guest acount.
I log in form my IMac trough the guest gate and this works wonderwell.
I also have to mention that if you share something or on the XP or on the Vista do not forgett to adapt the admitt criterias to write and read.
If there are questions, do ask matbe I can give you a sensible answer.
I am sure I forgott proabely to tell you some of the actions I did because I just did so many things I have difficult to point ut the essentials.
I hope I can help someone.
Marcel
Great News!!!!!
I got my network networked!!!
The problem I was having with login in to my Mac from Vista was a registry issue in Vista. I set up the network as follows:
PowerMac G5 running Leopard (OS X 10.5.5)
HP Elite running Vista Home Premium (x64 – 64 bit edition)
Router: Apple Extreme Wireless Base Station, with 4 ports.
Both the G5 and the HP are connected to the Router with Cat5 Cabling. I have an HP Printer that is connected wirelessly (that’s right, I have two seperate networks – a wired LAN, and a wireless printer).
I followed your instructions above for adjusting the system settings in both Vista and Leopard. I did change my Leopard user account name to JoePC\Joe in oder for the Vista machine to connect, haven’t tried to change it back, don’t really care too cause now it works. After I changed the account name, I still could not log in from Vista. I had read about registry entry adjstment in Vista on numerous other forums, and decided to try that. Here are the steps:
1. Click Windows Vista Orb
2. Go to the “Run” command on the right side, last option. In the run dialog box write REGEDIT and press enter
3. Authenticate by pressing Continue
4. On Regedit click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
5. Now Click File > Export this will backup your registry
(A good idea, but not really 100% neccesary in this case)
6. OK now click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > System > CurrentControlSet > Control > Lsa
7. In the right pane right click the “LmCompatibilityLevel” key and select Modify
8. Change this value from 3 to 1
9. Exit REGEDIT and now you should see your MAC in your Network
10. Double click the Mac, then enter your username as you normally would, not with the computername\username convention. Windows will do that automatically.
11. Enter your password that you use to log in to your Mac account.
12. Check the “Remember my password” option, unless you want to type it in everytime.
Makes ure that you have established the shred folders on both the Mac and Vista machines, otherwise you will only see the Public folders for these accounts.
Once that worked I set up a wireless network in the Airport, gave it a unique SSID (Network name) and enabled encryption and a network passphrase. Than I set up my printer to connect to the SSID with the passphrase, and now everyhting works just fine. This is great!!!! Thanks for all your time, and advice.
Joe Mesot.
I’m glad to hear you were able to get everything to work.
Thanks!!!! I’ve been pulling hair and searching for the answer that you very elegantly have written.
Nice goin!
hey i go through the steps for the mac and the last step where it is sapose to show up on the firewall it is not showing up and I have done the steps like 3 times and it is never in there. what can I do?
Thanks for the clear and to the point explanation,It worked immediately!!! I added this to my bookmarks, great works!!!
THANK YOU SOO MUCH!!! Why was this topic so hard to find useful information on? Very clear, very concise… Added you to my bookmarks as well. There is a real lack of good pc / mac compatibility resources on the web. It is so frustrating. Well done.
It worked for me, but only after i physically changed the public folders (The folder(s) i wanted to share permissions by CTRL clicking the folder then going to the permissions tab and allowing others to write so the windows machine could drop files into my shared folder.
Can not see the windows shared folder though yet, but this will do for now for casual use.
Thanks for the post… I’ve had it working, however, I want to transfer some files over wired ethernet. I have like 20 Gigs that I would rather do a direct ethernet connection to and I don’t know how. I’ve read the past steps but for some reason, can’t figure out in Vista how to get it working… any ideas any one?
that workedperfectly thank you. the example ip address coincidently was the same as the computer i was trying to connect to. thanks again
Hey it workes for me I shared the whole users account!
<Leopard to Vista
<Heres what I did:
<1. Click Go
<2. Connect to a Server….
<3.Instead of afp:[IP of Vista] replace it with smb:[IP of Vista]
<Ex. smb://192.168.1.101
<4.Click Connect
<5.Walla!!! it should work!
<NOTE: Make sure you follow the steps above for “In Mac OS X” written by the <author
My comment on Feb 9th, 2009 12:12 am was to the above comment
i followed these steps and was able to access my mac via vista. but when i tried to connect the mac to vista, i keep getting a Connection Failed. any ideas?
I tried everything as described above and Vista still refuses to recognize my Mac username and password.
Can someone please write down the exact format I am supposed to put in the username and password?
What I’m doing is [Mac IP address}\[Mac user nickname] and [Mac password].
Is that right?
Wow, you don’t know how long I tried to do this! It finally worked with your guidance, thank you.
Geva,
I’m not sure if this will help you or not. I am brand new to the Mac world. I spent hours over the weekend trying to set up sharing of Mac folders on my Vista Home Premium pc. It took a while and I finally got to the point where you are at where I needed to enter a user name and password. I’m not sure if you should be using the Mac user name and password or the windows one as mine are the same for both machines. I’m use to seeing windows authentication at work which is usually DOMAIN\USER so I tried that and it didn’t work. After banging my head on the desk for a while trying to figure out why it wasn’t working, I decided to try something stupid. Instead of a forward slash ‘\’ I decided to use a backslash ‘/’ thinking maybe mac did things differently (they like to do that). When I clicked ok, a message popped up saying that it was invalid (which I figured it would), but when it told me the correct way of entering it, it showed me two options. DOMAIN\USER (which I knew already) and USER@DOMAIN. I gave the second option a shot and sure enough, I was able to access my Mac from the Windows machine!!
Now the problem I’m having is trying to map that harddrive on Vista, whenever I reboot it compains that a network drive couldn’t be mapped. I try to access it through the Network area, my mapped harddrive, and even \\\ and nothing works. So I have to unmap the drive and remap it everytime I restart my computer. If anyone can help me out with that, that would be great!
Here are a couple of additional things that I found helped the issue. Firstly I found that Mac is flaky as hell but after doing all of the above suggestions if you still cant see the network computers then switch of File Sharing on the Vista PC until the MAC populates the Network then switch the Vista File sharing back on. The other way is on the Mac just to use Go to Server and type in the computer names e.g. smb://jim or smb://ted no need to use IP Addresses computer names are fine. What I cannot understand in all of this is why Apple have not sorted this issue out…its a Major Flaw to my mind. Seems to me loyal Mac users have been penalised by upgrading to Leopard…I am not an Apple fan by the way
hi ive done every instruction my only problem is i cant access the folder saying dropbox on my vista.. im using a macbook leopard 10.5.. but the music folder that i added from my mac is accessible… plss help??
Thanks Kyle!
It worked!
Hurray!
worked for me. thank you so much
Hi,
This has to be the best and most basic tutorial I have come across in regards to connecting PCMac. All the other ones I’ve read make you go to the moon and back just to connect the 2, but this one is spot on.
Good Job! CHEERS!
Thank You so much! I’ve been trying for hours to do this, I just wish I found this sooner. The apple site didn’t help, forums didn’t, finally i found this and voila!
Hi there,
I got as far as opening the mac’s public folder from the Vista computer, and then I cannot open any files inside the public folder. It takes two minutes for a sub-folder to open.
I also connected to the vista computer from the mac via the ‘connect to server’ function, and the same thing as above happens.
I am using a speedtouch router: the mac is connected via cable, and the PC is connected wirelessly to it.
What I meant when the file inside the public folder cannot open is that when I try to copy the file to the desktop, the progress bar stays at 0% for ten minutes, then it times out.
I tried everything stated in this page. I wonder if it’s something to do with the speedtouch router. I also looked at its setup pages, disabled the firewall, and no different.
One thing I also noticed is when i turn the mac’s airport off (it was on even when the network cable was plugged in), the PC fails to connect to the mac when I click the mac icon. Then I turn the mac’s airport back on and then the PC can connect to the mac again.
Update: The mac was moved to a different room and just wirelessly connected without a network cable connected. Just now, I finally managed to copy a file from the mac’s public folder to the PCs desktop using the PC!
I suppose that the computers should either be both connected via ethernet cable or both wirelessly, so I think interference was the problem after all!
Now I’ll see if I can backup my videos from the PC to the mac. Thank you very much.
TC
Awesome – thanks for sharing y’all.
Got to love the internet!
For the Mac users that are confused about the username/password prompt to connect to Vista:
Inside the Finder tool, you should see the name of the Vista machine being shared. Click on that icon and then click on the Connect As… button.
You will see something like:
Enter you user name and password to access the file server “YOUR VISTA COMPUTER NAME HERE”.
Connect as: () Guest
() Registered User
Name: [ DEFAULTS TO YOUR MAC NAME ]
Password: []
It will default the user name to your *MAC* username. However, you want to look at this like a *WINDOWS* login (makes sense when you think about it), so you enter the username and password for the Windows Vista machine you are trying to log into.
Hope that helps the Mac users out there.
Hi peeps, having some serious problems with this. Trying to get my Vista laptop to connect to my mac. Here is what I have so far:
Windows Vista – I have my Mac name showing up in Network. However, I’m completely baffled with this username/DOMAIN crap that it’s coming up with – WHAT EXACTLY IS THAT REFERRING TO? It’s really doing my head in. What am I supposed to type in there? Username and Password – FOR WHAT? I’ve tried the mac password and the windows password and neither of them works.
Any help PLEASE anyone?
I was having the same trouble with not being able to access the Vista machine from the Mac, even after fixing the firewall. I eventually got it to work though, after I tried using different fixed IP addresses. I had been using 192.168.1.23 which didn’t work and I changed to 192.168.1.123 which DID work. Seems to be that the client needs to be above 100.
Ok do you need a router for this to work?
Would I Still Need A Cross over cable if just my computer is wired to the router and the imac is wireless? Thanks Again Kyle
Hi James,
You shouldn’t need a cross over cable if you have a router. I’m guessing that you have a wireless router since you mentioned that your iMac is wireless. That is actually the setup I have; my PC is wired to my router and my MacBook Pro connects to it wirelessly. If your router is not wireless, you could connect your iMac to the router using just a normal ethernet cable. The important thing is that both computers be on the same network; since you have a router, all you should have to do is make sure that both computers are connected to it. I hope this helps.
–
Kyle
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Before, file sharing only seemed to work via cable-router-wireless-target computer, or wireless-router-wireless-target computer, not cable-router-cable-target computer.
I know that networking via cable is going to be faster than via wireless.
However, in the router’s setup pages, opened via network\{router’s name}\, I opened the home network page, which shows all the devices connected to the router; clicked on the connected device which is the computer; clicked “configure” near the top right corner to allow settings for the device to be changed; and changed the type from “generic device” to “desktop computer”.
After I did this for both computers connected to the router via cable, I can now do file sharing from my PC via cable-router-cable, ten times faster than via wireless, but not from the MAC.
I was once able to share from the mac when both computers were connected via wireless-router-wireless, although it was slow both ways. Here, there was a blue-screened PC icon in the network folder of the mac which opened the PC’s shared folders.
I just found that I can connect to the Vista PC by doing this:
>Type smb://192.168.1.64 or your vista PC’s IP address
>As my PC is not password protected, I just click ‘connect’ on the login screen and voila! I can now view the PC’s public folders from the mac!
I suppose, if the PC is password protected, then I would just enter the PC’s username and password into the mac’s login screen, although I haven’t tried this yet.
Thank you for helping me everyone!
Oh, I just needed to say that my router is a Speedtouch router, which came with the Tiscali broadband package.