Connecting PowerBook with 4 PC's (XP)

owaters

owaters

Registered
Hi,

I am having some trouble connecting to PC's on my network. I can see them in the 'Network' section (I'm running OSX 10.3.5), however, I cannot connect to them. First of all, when I double click on a computer in the 'Network' section I get the authentication window and then once the details have been entered I get the following message:

The alias "COMPUTER-NAME" could not be opened, because the original item could not be found."

The second way I tried was using the 'Connect to Sever... (Command-K)' method in the Finder.

After entering 'smb://computer-name/' I get the authentication window, I eneter the details and then it comes up saying the username and password was incorrect. However, those details are not incorrect.

I have also been attempting to connect as a guest to the Windows XP PC machines using the username 'guest' and password 'guest' but with no luck. Does anyone know how to connect as a guest to get access to the 'Shared' folders on a Windows XP PC?

The PC's can connect to me absolutely fine, but I can't connect to them at all.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks :)
 
Do you have the built-in Windows firewall activated? If so, it needs to be be deactivated. You can download a much better version of a firewall for free from ZoneAlarm's site (http://www.zonealarm.com).

If no to the first question, then are you running any 3rd party firewall apps? If so, try disabling them for a second and see if it lets you log in then. If so, then you'll need to figure out how to add your Mac to the 'trusted zone' list for that firewall. Check their help file or website.

Are you using a router (not cable/dsl modem) or just a switch/hub? Most combo routers that you buy today have an internal firewall built-in. If so, consider using this feature. It'll allow the local computers to chat nicely while keeping out the riffraff from the internet. That'll let you run the Win box sans firewall.

Finally, make sure you log-in details are the same on the Mac as on the Win box. Meaning same username and password (case sensitive).
 
Windows XP doesn't have a Guest account by default, but it can be enabled. Not that it really matters, because you're having the dreaded Alias Cannot Be Found... error. I was having that happen with my PC running XP and this was the fix:

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http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q177078
This is one of those annoying occasions where feeding the error message into the MS KB search engine does not yield either of the above two KB articles which quote the very same error message!
The KEY WORDS in the error messages that I was seeing were the last line: ?from WinXP: ?Not enough server storage is available to process this command. ?from Win98se: ?Not enough memory to complete transaction. Close some applications and retry.
THE FIX: ?check registry key ?HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters ?for an IRPStackSize value. In my case that value was 11 (decimal) and MS KB advises WinXP users to increase it by 3 however I chose to increase it to the WinXP default value of 15. (other OS users should check the KB article since the default appears to be different) (This was done on both WinXP machines in my network.)
A reboot of both machines following this registry edit and the majority of network shared folders were once again accessible. I needed to delete a few and recreate them but adding these new network places went smoothly after this fix.
KUDOS: ?Acknowledgement to Hans-Georg Michna who had responded on the MS WinXP Networking newsgroup with helpful advice to others with related network problems and who had a web page that directed me to the above two MS KB articles: ?http://www.michna.com/kb/WxNotEnoughServerStorage.htm
ROOT CAUSE: ?I don't know. Norton AV appears to be implicated but I can't access the relevant Symantec web site knowledge base article. My guess is that a stacksize of 11 was optimal up until the point that I introduced the newer hardware to the network. Maybe there are more levels required in the stack due to one of the many new features found on this newly introduced MB (the RTL8201BL PHYceiver chip being the most probable candidate in my mind). Maybe a clean install of XP would have resulted in the default value of 15 being assigned to this parameter. Maybe, maybe ..... !
OTHER REFERENCES: ?for the very curious read about IRPstacksize (albeit from an NT perspective) at: ?http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;102967 ?http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;97599 ?http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;102974 ?finally Norton AntiVirus seems to be implicated but the Symantec web server is down so I can't access the following referenced URL to learn more: ?http://service1.symantec.com/suppor...pendocument&highlight=0,enough,server,storage ?
Written in response to:
ability to browse shared folders is one-way on a WinXP peer-peer network (Ann: Saturday, June 28, 2003 at 5:21 pm)
There are presently no replies to this message.

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Did you try connecting to your Mac from your PC? Does that work?
 
mdkny:
There are no firewalls running on this computer. We have a hardware firewall running at the wireless base.

btoth:
That fix seems to be about a completely unrelated topic and error message. How will that fix solve the Alias not found problem?

Yes, the PC's can quite happily connect to me.

Thanks both for your replies.
 
The guy I work with said the same thing when his Win2KPro machine kept being a 'turd' and didn't play well with the beige Mac, the iBook, or our WinXPPro Dell laptop. We had an identical computer 5' away that worked just fine (bought same time, same everything). Turned out to be a well hidden copy of Black Ice Defender running.

What you described is the exact same issues we had. I also had the same issue trying to connect to the XP laptop (after upgrade from Win2KPro) due to the internal firewall shipped with Windoze. It's turned on by default when XP is installed.

I tore hair out for a long time trying to figure it out, that's what it was. I'd do a double check just to make sure the Windoze firewall isn't enabled. It's pretty easy to do and should only take a few seconds (http://service1.symantec.com/suppor...56c75005f451a&dtype=&prod=&ver=&osv=&osv_lvl=). If other people have access to it, might want to check for 3rd party ones too. Someone might have put one on there without you knowing.
 
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