Hi Allison, One way to share files between windows 7, is what I think you have, and a mac, can be done, but it is a 2-way configuration. I haven't played much with accessing mac files from a windows computer, because I always work on my mac since I have it. Because once you go mac, you'll never go back. But the other way around is simple, as long as you have some information collected beforehand. So I will describe how to connect to a windows machine from one of your macs. The other way back, how to connect from windows to a mac share, I don't have enough experience with.
Before I tell you how you do it, here's what you are striving for to begin with. On your windows pc, you have a share. This is something like the my documents folder, an entire drive, or anything present for that matter. On the mac side, you have your finder. Where you would go into my network places on windows to find other computers, the mac does it differently. On the desktop, and in some other places, once you get file sharing working, you will have a new icon. If you open it, you will be accessing your windows files. It is that simple, but if you've never done it before, a little more to know before you have it working. To access your windows machine from a mac: 1. You need to know the network name of your windows pc that you want to access. If you already have a network set up, this will be familiar. If you don't know the windows computer network name of the pc you want to get into from your mac, you will need is ip address. If you don't know how to do one of these and you need it, let me know. 2. You need to have an account on the windows computer to log in to. Because windows 7 is already set up on your side, you will indeed have a user account, possibly with a password. When you work in windows 7, you are logged in under your own account, that is usually created when windows was set up. You use the same name and password to log in to windows if you do it over a network This is the name and password you will have to have ready. If not, then you wil need to set up a password associated with your user account on the windows pc, because without a password, sharing will not work this way. 3. Now that you know the network name of the windows pc, and you have a username and password, it is time to Connect. To do this, from your mac, in the finder, hit command k. This is a keystroke belonging to the go menu. It lets you connect to a server. From a mac perspective, a file hoster like your windows pc is a file server. A dialog comes up. 4. In the text field that you land in, fill in the protocol and the address of the windows pc and hit connect. The protocol that you always want to use is smb, as in server message block. Don't worry about what it is. The first five characters of the text to type in here, is always: smb://. That is s, m, b, colon, slash, slash. 5. Now say, that the pc you want to log in to is called Allison. Then the full line you type in is: smb://Allison That is all without spaces. So first s m b colon slash slash, those 5 characters, and then the pc name, Allison for this example. 6. You can now select, which shares from windows you want to see on your mac. In this dialog on your mac, you may see somelike my documents, drive d, etc. Just select one or more from the list and confirm. I think there's just a normal ok button. 7. Your windows share will now be mounted in finder. You can find it on your desktop and you can open it with command down arrow, and close it with command w. Note: in windows 7, you may have to do a little bit more to set up file sharing to be allowed than you would on an xp machine. From what I understand, you have multiple windows machines. If one of them is windows 7 and another is xp, and you can perfectly see your windows 7 files from an xp machine, then you can be sure that file sharing for this win7 pc will also work from a mac. Hth, Paul. On Sep 18, 2011, at 3:18 AM, Allison Mervis wrote: > Hi Scott. > Thanks so much for your response. All of the pc's and both macs are > successfully connected to the network, either via WIFI or Ethernet. However, > I want to be able to share files between all of the machines. On the pc's, > I'm able to go into the network and sharing center, see all of the computers > in the home group, and copy files and folders between them. Can this be done > on the mac? Thanks again. > Allison > From: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com > [mailto:macvisionaries@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Scott Howell > Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2011 5:49 PM > To: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com > Subject: Re: Question regarding home networking. > > Allison, > > Adding the MInis would be no different than adding the PCs. In fact once you > turn on wireless networking or connect them via ethernet, assuming your > network is configured using dhcp, the Minis will pull IP addresses from the > router. > > On Sep 17, 2011, at 5:38 PM, Allison Mervis wrote: > > > Hi everyone. > My boyfriend and I currently have all of the PC's in our house networked via > a home group. We recently purchased Mac minis, and we would like to add them > to the network as well. How exactly is this accomplished? Is the fact that > the network was originally created on a PC going to cause issues? Any > assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much. > Allison > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. 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