Connecting to Windows Vista and Windows 7 using the the “Connect to Server...” feature in Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Leopard.

If you are running Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard and you want to connect to Windows Vista and Windows 7 computers please read on.

Trying to connect to the latest Windows Operating systems from the latest Mac Operating systems is still not as easy as it should be, thanks Apple. Lets keep the pads and the pods coming... So whatever the case may be it appears that even after turning on Windows file sharing and making sure both the Macs and Windows boxes where all on the same network and workgroup the Macs still fails to see the Windows 7 and Vista machines that are offering network shares. Fortunately, it is not to hard to manually figure out a fairly easy way to connect to your PC with out having to coup out to just using IP address at the moment.

So I am going to give some steps below to show you how to connect to a Windows 7 / Vista from the Mac.

On your Windows 7 / Vista computer:

1. Know your User name and password, in this example my user name is “Dan” (To find your user name click the windows Logo aka Start Menu and look at the upper right section of the menu as pictured )
2. Enable Sharing in Windows for your user and the stuff you want to share. (For more on how to enable file sharing in windows click the Start menu and click on “Help and Support” and then search for “sharing”)
3. Get the name of your Windows computer.
   1. Click “Start” menu
   2. Click “Computer”
   3. See your computer name in the lower left of the window as pictured below, in this example my PC is called “DAN-PC”.
4. You have all that you need and are now ready to try to connect to your PC from your Mac.

On your Snow Leopard or Leopard Mac:

1. Go to the Finder, click on the Go Menu and select “Connect to Server...”
2. Type into the “Server Address:” box something like the following: smb://YourWindowsUserName@YouPCsName (In my example it would be smb://Dan@DAN-PC)
3. Press the connect button.
4. When prompted make sure the registered user radio button is selected and then enter your windows user name and password, and press connect
5. Select the volumes you want to mount and then press the “OK” button.

So there you have it a better way to connect to your Windows PC in a more consistent manner that does not require looking up your PCs current IP address or setting up static IPs or relying on the broken Network Browser in the Finder. Now your ready to use Network Drive Launcher and make this stuff really fly...