New macbook can't see windows 7 pc's on network

I cannot help you as I need help on this, too.
Have a network with 1 Mac OS 10.5.8, and 5 PC (2 x XP, 1 x Vista and 2 x Win7). Was having intermittent issues but after adding the second Win7 box, have lost the Mac and the two XP boxes on the LAN. They are there; they show up at the router; no problems with e-mail or internet access. It is on the LAN, all with the same workgroup name, that the Win7 and Vista boxes have ganged up and blocked the others out.

Let me add my frustration with this one...

I just picked up a new MPB. I'm having difficulties seeing my established windows network. I have a workgroup name setup for the network. I have 3 windows 7 PCs and one XP PC and one windows home server connected to the network with no problem. I had my mac connected originally, but suddenly it won't see the workgroup. Finder has no Network category listed. I've been racking my brain to think of what I've changed but there is nothing I can come up with. This possibly started after I went through the OSX updates because it was working fine originally. I've checked and re-checked the workgroup name in WINS. I've tried command+k to connect to the WHS, but that does nothing.

On the other hand, I have a VMware fusion install of windows 7 on my MPB that connects quite nicely with my other Win7 machines.

I have nothing fancy setup with the firewall that could affect this. Besides, I know I haven't changed anything on the router since my mac originally saw the workgroup.

Very frustrated. I'm hoping Apple picks up on this one because I've seen this same problem mentioned in other forums. I'm hoping the mac community can help me out as well!!!

I hope someone with a clue picks up this thread soon.

Was searching the Windows forums and found there is an issue with Windows 7 not playing nicely withy other pre Vista computers. MS has a 'hotfix' for Win XP that includes dire warnings about it not being fully tested. Am personally convinced, in my heart if not my head, that Windows 7 has something to do with the Mac being ostracized from the LAN..

At least you are able to connect manually. Nothing I do gets me onto our LAN.

woke up this morning....it works. I don't get it...

Used command + k, smb://[server name]

Now Finder has every win 7 machine listed. I don't think it's a win7 problem alone. I've had just as much of a problem with my server which is windows home server.

No confidence it will stick. I'll see what tomorrow brings...

I'm pretty sure this has nothing to do with windows 7 specifically i use a macbook pro and work in a windows server network. We continually come against this issue with freelancers and our other mac users, one minute connected and can access files and folders on network next day can't. I personally have been lucky and always manage to get my connections back quickly i never have issues but its my task to resolve them for everyone else in the office.

Two things that may help: click the apple icon (top left) scroll down to 'Recent Items' in drop-down amongst Applications and Documents it should also show a 'Servers' list and if you've been connected recently in the past it should list it and you can force a reconnect. All else fails a restart has usually solved the problem just a bit of a faff!

It definately is an intermittent problem and varys from one mac to the next i've not found any link with updates either....it remains a mystery.

another thing worth noting is we randomly get password error messages when connecting and logging onto the network through our macs, despite no password reset actions being assigned to the user. My workaround for when this happens is to resort to another user login different from my usual one e.g. i login as myself but then switch to our guest login and it solves it, i then find a few days later i can reconnect as myself again using the same login credentials, pretty bizarre.

Thank you. Some very good suggestions that we'll try as soon as needed.

The word "bizarre" certainly does describe the issue. As to being unrelated to Win 7, you may be right, but we also have random issues with the non-Win 7 boxes communicating. So far the only constant is the Win7 PCs like other Win7 and Vista PCs and get along just fine.

Just an FYI, I have Windows 7 machines networked with my Mac. For a long time I struggled with this... well more like it didn't work right away so I ignored the problem.

As other posters have said, the trick was to manually "connect to server" (in the Finder click on "Go" menu, then select "Connect to Server" and then type the name of my windows machine in like this "smb://Dell_i7" (in my case, the Windows 7 machine I am connecting to is called "Dell_i7").

Of course on the Windows side I had to set up and enable sharing (NOT homegroup), but other than that it was pretty easy.

The frustration is that with XP machines I do not have to do this manually every time I restart. They just show up (on the left sidebar in the Finder under "Shared"). But it does work.

same to me,

my xp could each time shows in Finder automatically and the Vista and Win 7 cannot connect at all.
hopefully we could have some fixes on this one day soon and let all 'connected' computer connect...