Connect Vista to Mac

Question

Connect Vista to Mac

I recently had to buy a Windows laptop with Vista Home Basic installed. Unable to connect to the Macs, I upgraded to Vista Home Premium but I am still unable to connect both systems. The Vista machine does not show on Mac sidebar nor does any of my Macs show on Windows Network and Sharing Centre. The Vista laptop successfully shares the network connection from my BT HomeHub router and also shares a printer. Although the laptop can successfully ping the Macs, the Macs fail to ping the Vista laptop. Sharing and Discovery is on in the Vista machine as well as Private network. Firewalls on all machines has been turned off in case there is any problem there. I have tried various solutions posted here and on Google with no success. Would be grateful for any help on offer.

iMac G5 20, Mac OS X (10.5.2), G3iMac 10.3.9 and iBook 10.3.9 BT HomeHub router

Posted on May 4, 2008 3:39 AM

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Answer 1

mreckhof

Level 2

405 points

May 4, 2008 6:59 PM in response to Mary Johnston

There are a number of reasons why the systems won't auto show up in each others finders / discovery windows. So let's put that issue aside.

Open Terminal (spotlight / terminal).

Run the following replacing 192.168.15.10 with the IP of your vista machine:

nmblookup -A 192.168.15.10

You should get a response back similar to the following:
Looking up status of 192.168.15.10
NAS1 <00> - B <ACTIVE>
NAS1 <03> - B <ACTIVE>
NAS1 <20> - B <ACTIVE>
WORKGROUP <00> - <GROUP> B <ACTIVE>
WORKGROUP <1e> - <GROUP> B <ACTIVE>

MAC Address = 00-00-00-00-00-00

If you don't, double check your windows firewall(s).

If you do, try connecting to the windows machine by going to the finder, hit option-K, and inputting the following (again, changing 192.168.15.10 to your vista machines IP).

smb://192.168.15.10/

and selecting connect.

Report back if it doesn't work.

One other thing to try (I see this a LOT on my wife's MacBook), open terminal again and enter:

arp -d -a

Then try pinging the Vista machine again. If it starts pinging, try your connections again.

Michael

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Answer 2

May 5, 2008 5:54 AM in response to Mary Johnston

Thanks for advice. Completely uninstalled Norton Security and then reinstalled it. Turned off Norton Firewall and have now successfully connect my G5 to the Vista laptop.
Many thanks

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