WinXP to Mac - The Specified Network Name is No Longer Available

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Level 1

110 points

WinXP to Mac - The Specified Network Name is No Longer Available

Hello,

I cannot figure out, for the life of me, why our WinXP machine won't connect to our Mac.

Mac: Powerbook G4 running OS X 10.4.7, WIndows File Sharing is active and an account is selected which will use Windows sharing.

PC: Windows XP Home Edition, SP2. A file share is active.

We're both using wireless connections via a D-Link DI-624 router. Both the Mac and PC are on the same workgroup and have different machine names. Both are on the same subnet.

The Mac can connect to Windows XP share directories and printers without a problem. The Windows XP machine can browse to the Mac's web page when the Personal Web Sharing on the Mac is active. The XP machine can even ping the Mac's address with no packet losses.

However, when the XP machine tries to connect to the Mac (via Map Network Drive or from the command line) using \\machine\share, we get the following error: "The Specified Network Name is No Longer Available". The Mac's machine name shows up when we do a search for computers, but gives us that same error when we double click on it. Furthermore, the printer name does not show up in the printer list, although the Mac's machine name does.

Any ideas? Any more information needed?

Thanks a lot. This problem is driving me insane. :/

Scott

Powerbook G4, Mac OS X (10.4)

Posted on Sep 15, 2006 11:00 PM

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Answer 1

Frenzy Author

Level 1

110 points

Sep 16, 2006 7:07 PM in response to Frenzy

EDIT: I am using the ip address in the command: \\192.168.0.101\<share> and not the name of the machine, although that doesn't work, either.

That IP is the IP addy for the mac and it's a static IP set up in the router as well.

Thanks.

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Answer 2

Frenzy Author

Level 1

110 points

Sep 18, 2006 9:39 AM in response to Frenzy

I finally figured it out! It had to do with the smb.conf file and a missing file. Here's what happened (for people with future problems like this):

o Looked at the log.smbd file (in /var/log/samba) and saw errors about not being able to convert from CP0. Searched online and found (from http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2490054&#2490054) that I needed to change 'dos charset = 0' to 'CP850'...
o In Terminal, did a 'sudo pico /etc/smb.conf' and changed the line "dos charset = 0" to "dos charset = CP850"
o Still didn't work, and found from the log.smbd file that the convert msg was gone, but was replaced with a "Failed to open /private/var/db/samba/secrets.tdb" msg.
o I saw that the directory (at the ..../samba level) didn't exist, so, from Terminal, I used sudo to create the /private/var/db/samba directory (sudo mkdir /private/var/db/samba), and did a 'sudo touch secrets.tdb' to create the file, then 'sudo chown root:wheel secrets.tdb' to assign the correct user/group.

Used 'sharepoints' program to create shares and voila! It works great now!

To share my printer, I'm using bonjour, which is a free printer/etc. sharing program from Apple for those with OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and WinXP/2000/2003 machines ( http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bonjour/).

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