Filesharing between Vista and Mac OS X

The other day I had to access files over the LAN on OS X 10.4.3 and retrieve them to my Vista. No matter it’s year 2009, this process is never a trivial task.

This post was more a reminder to my self then a real tutorial. For more in depth explanation check out this tutorial and this one for sharing more than public folder on OS X. Also keep in mind that I had to access files on OS X Tiger, Leopard has slightly different menu options.

If you wish to access Mac share from Vista

Log into a Mac OS X system:

1. Open System Preferences and go to the Sharing pane. Click on the “Services” and check the box next to “Windows Sharing”.
2. Click on the “Accounts…” button and check the box(es) next to the Mac OS X user account(s) you would like to enable access for from the network
3. Take note of your Mac’s IP address, which will be displayed at the bottom of the Sharing pane in System Preferences (eg. Windows users can access your computer at \\192.168.1.2\seven)

On Vista computer:

1. Click Windows key + R (or select Start / Run) and type in ‘regedit’
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
3. In the right pane, click on the “LmCompatibilityLevel” and in the Value data change the value from 3 to 1
4. Exit regedit and you should now be able to properly authenticate to your Mac OS X (or other Samba) shares in the network. If you don’t wish to edit registry manually, you can simply download and execute this reg file who does this for you.
5. To access Mac share, navigate (from Explorer or Run command) to ip address and share name on Mac from Mac Step 3 (eg: \\192.168.1.2\seven). When prompted, enter Mac username and password you enabled to access those shares and that’s it.

If you wish to access Vista share from Mac

On Vista system:

1. Go to Control Panel / Network and Sharing Center and setup File sharing or/and Public folder sharing. Select users who will have access to those shares over the network and select access level
2. Open up command prompt (click on Run, enter cmd and press Enter) and enter: ipconfig (and press Enter). Look for a IPv4 Address from one of connected adapters (Wireless LAN in my case) eg. 192.168.1.3.

On Mac OS X system:

1. Open up Go menu of Finder toolbar and select Connect to Server (Apple key + K)
2. Under Server Address enter IP address and share name from Vista system in following format: smb://ip_address/share_name/ (eg: smb://192.168.1.3/public/ for normal share or smb://192.168.1.3/c$ for admin share)