ist2_3470051_file_sharing

I am running Mac OS X 10.5. 6 and through the long history of the updates from 10.5.0 till now there has been a problem with seeing Windows Shares on the Mac Finder. The way it should work is simple enough, you open a window showing your drives and listed right there would be all the shares it has found but the list remain empty meaning you have to do this the hard way.

If you use “connect to server” and put in there smb://<name of machine> then indeed it brings up that machine, the icon that comes up for the computer though is the lighter of the two – not the dark blue – a picture will explain better:

icons I noticed for example that Windows XP machines came up no problem most of the time, if I changed the Workgroup or computer name, the machine came up but after a few reboots – once again it was lost and had to be connected by hand. I tested across Windows and it could see all machines including the Linux Box and even the mac, the same can be said of Linux, it had no trouble. After talking to people and looking around, it was one of those classic mac issues were som said “never had that problem on mine ever” to others saying the same as me or results in-between.

I am sure 100% it is the SMB inside the OS X that is at fault – how can an update make it work 100% of the time and the next update comes along and it is broken again? I had many SMB type problems such as me fixing the IP on all the computers and the copy speed going down to the lowest number ever, resorting back to DHCP and the problem went away but been a Mac, you cannot delve deep into the inner workings.

If anybody has any views on this – feel free to comment – I am the only one with this issue?