Macbook Network

[eximo]

Only had the macbook 1 day and already its playing up

I have a windows vista PC which hosts shares for Music, Videos, Downloads etc... I want to move some of this to my Mac. Yesterday when i opened Finder the PC was discovered and i could browse the shares however since then i have to connect to server each time....

Also i sometimes get the box were my wireless cannot find the preffered networks even though it lists the network that is in the preffered network list

Stupid thing. Anyone have any clues on how to get this working again? Seems silly having a network option but nothing in it

 

[MyRDXS]

1) Do you shut this PC down at all - if so the connection will be lost and you have to discover it and connect again. Try to use "remember" this network where possible

2) I used to get this, but I found by going into "System Preferences">Network >Advanced and click the Airport tab. In here you will see a list of preferred networks. Make sure yours is in the list, if not add it in and enter its password (WEP or WPA) and click "remember any network this computer has joined" tick box. This may help to retain networks that you have.

3) Note - sometimes weak wireless signals can often not show up, but I too have seen this in the past when I know my router is giving out a strong signal but Airport sometimes doesn't show it, fairly rare this for me anyway.

 

[eximo]

1. PC is shutdown when not in use - however surely the network dialog should browse the network like it does in vista?

2. My wireless is in the preffered network list, i tried to make a new location but that didnt do anything. Browsing last night and this morning however it appears to be stopped doing this

Just seems a bit strange i would have to manually connect to shares each time. I used to have a NAS on the network too and it picked that up as a shared item but now this no longer exists

 

[nigelbb]

A minor failing of OS X is that the handling of network shares is different to Windows. In particular there is no way to connect a network share as easily & simply as under Windows.

In Windows once you find a network share you can right click & map it as a network drive & set it to reconnect at login. It then remains visible on the system as e.g. Z: until you disconnect it whether the share is available or not. Windows only checks whether the share is available when you try to access it.

On OS X there is no such simple mechanism to make a network share permanently available. It is possible to edit system files or use a script to mount the drive or drag the mounted drive into Login Items in Systems Preferences>Accounts. There are one or 2 other methods that I can't remember at the moment but none are as easy as the right mouse click in Windows.

I did just find this application while Googling that sounds as if it may be useful Download Bonjour Mounter for Mac - Mount your AFP or SMB share points silently in the background.

 

[eximo]

Been doing some testing on this.

So far the Preferred network issue seems to have sorted itself. I removed everything from the keychain, network prefs and recreated the network connection and so far so good.

The finder network issue is still persistant however. I have created a virtual XP machine and whilst this is on the share for the XP machine comes up alongwith the vista ones. It almost seems to be XP is required to start the search for computers.

Also reading that OS X doesnt like it if a vista machine is the Master Browser, i turned the computer broswer service off on both Vista machines however they dont appear without the XP machine running.

Anyone else have this issue?