Section 37. Share Files from a Windows PC

37. Share Files from a Windows PC

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

35 Share Another Mac's Files

36 Allow Others to Share Your Files

SEE ALSO

38 Allow Windows Users to Share Your Files

Mac OS X can share files with Windows machines just as easily as it can with other Macs; in fact, it can be more straightforward to network a Mac and a Windows PC together than to network two PCs.

Sharing files with Windows machines is a two-way process: First you must mount a remote Windows machine as a volume on your Mac, and then you have to set up your Mac to share its own files with Windows users.

1.	Browse the Network in the Finder Open a Finder window; click the Network icon in the Sidebar. The available Windows domains and workgroups appear in the column view listing along with any Mac zones .
2.	Select a Domain or Workgroup Click the name of the domain or workgroup containing the Windows machine you want to use. A Windows domain is managed by a domain controller , a Windows computer whose administrator controls all the computers in the domain. User accounts on Windows machines that are part of a domain authenticate their passwords with the domain controller, not the client Windows machine itself. 37. Share Files from a Windows PC From the Mac standpoint, there is really no practical difference between a workgroup and a domain; both operate the same way to the Mac. KEY TERMS Zone A named collection of Macs in an AppleTalk network. AppleTalk zones have no built-in authentication; they're just logical groupings for more convenient access. Workgroup In Windows, a workgroup is very similar to an AppleTalk zoneit's simply a name used to group Windows computers together so that they can be browsed more meaningfully. Domain Centrally managed groups of Windows computers with centralized password management and administration.
3.	Select the Windows Server to Connect To The name of each available Windows server appears in all capital letters . Double-click the one you want to connect to; if you're in column view, select the server and click the Connect button in the preview pane. The server's SMB/CIFS Authentication dialog box appears.
4.	Enter User Information To connect to a Windows machine, you must have a username and password for that machine. Enter that information in the dialog box and select the Add to Keychain check box if you want to save the password for future connections. Click OK to connect.
5.	Select a Shared Resource After your user information is authenticated, the Windows server is mounted in the Finder and shown in the Sidebar. You can navigate into it to choose a shared resource (also called a share ). Shares are individual folders configured on the Windows machine for sharing. All shared folders configured under the account you used for authentication are available for you to mount.
6.	Browse the Remote Files Navigate into any available share; you can then browse it as you would any other volume.