OSX 10 cannot see windows machines,

Soldato
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17 Jul 2008
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all windows machines can see each other and the MAC (including the mac shared public folder)

the mac can ping by IP the windows machines

the mac can browse the internet no problems.

the mac has the same dns / subnet / DG as the windows machines

the mac CANNOT ping by name windows machines (unable to resolve)

if you browse the network on the mac the list has nothing in it...

the MAC did work fine until we disabled the wireless and plugged it straight into the network via an ethernet cable. HOWEVER putting it back on wireless and removing the ehternet cable (with several reboots did not fix the problem)

any ideas on trouble shooting I could easily fix this on a pc but dont know much mac
 
If you connect manually using smb://ip-here from the connect to server (Command+K) what happens?

not at the mac, but I suspect it will work since it seems to be names resolution thats at fault...

thanks for the suggestion as I htink the smb:// will fix the main issue they will be able to connect to the windows machine they need to using that

any ideas on how to trouble shoot the names resolution? does mac resolve netbios names via dns or is that nothing to do with it? does it jsut broadcast?
 
I don't have the answer to that I'm afraid.

You could just make a shortcut or applescript to mount the PCs.

I've never actually had PCs show up in my sidebar in Finder.

Only time a SMB share has come up is for my NAS (UnRAID) which broadcasts the servers connection abilities.

I've always hated networking in Windows (in contrast clicking one box in OS X and everything works fine between my macs - but do the same in W7 on the same machines - ohhhh no!)
 
Hmmm, this is interesting! Our Mac Pro at work has just started doing the same thing.

We regularly connect to a windows based network share using smb://hostname but just recently it's been unable to connect at all unless i use smb://ipaddress instead.

I can't even use the windows remote desktop app on there to RDP to a windows box using hostname, yet this works with IP address fine.

I've not had any time to have a look at it yet but was going to do a bit of digging with Mac DNS and name resolution/netbios. As with your scenario, our Mac Pro and window's boxes are all on the same DNS, subnet and gateway etc
 
Hmmm, this is interesting! Our Mac Pro at work has just started doing the same thing.

We regularly connect to a windows based network share using smb://hostname but just recently it's been unable to connect at all unless i use smb://ipaddress instead.

I can't even use the windows remote desktop app on there to RDP to a windows box using hostname, yet this works with IP address fine.

I've not had any time to have a look at it yet but was going to do a bit of digging with Mac DNS and name resolution/netbios. As with your scenario, our Mac Pro and window's boxes are all on the same DNS, subnet and gateway etc

I'd be really interested to know if you work it out, I dont have a clue about mac networking...

Thoughts I have are

1) it gets the list from the master browser and its not able to find the master browser (possibly it changed or is turned off and its too stupid to find the new master browser)

2) it needs a DNS domain name suffix adding (eg mynetwork.local) in DHCP (i did not mess with this as it was getting late , however I did note DHPC was not giving out a local domain suffix). so when I ping www.intel.com it knows to query intel.com for www, but when I ping davespc there is no domain for it to query.

3) somethign to do with workgroups, I did set it on the mac in the netbios tab, however after a reboot and no effect i put it back to nothing, however maybe I should have left it for a while)

the above 3 may be nothing to do with it its jsut some initial thoughts
 
I got to the verge of tearing my hair out over this a while back. If I remember correctly, it's to do with 'Master Browsers' and the problem lies in OSX not Windows. I noticed that when I connected my NAS, all the PCs in the house showed up, but when I disconnected the NAS, everything disappeared. Fun times!

Either way, things seem to have improved in Lion as I can now see all comps with a degree of reliability regardless of what is connected.
 
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