In working with our new Mac Mini for a while now, I remembered an issue that seems to pop up every time I have a new system. I agree that this doesn’t happen often but still the issue does exist.
To the issue: When I set up a new Mac, I can immediately network with the other Mac’s on my network but when I try to use a share from a Windows PC, I can’t do it. It’s solvable because I have solved it before but I have to google the answer or compare working systems to the new system before I can get it to work. The reverse issue is also true in that the Windows PC doesn’t have the ability to get at a Mac share on a new Mac system.
We all hear that OS X/Mac’s have such great usability and while I generally agree with this, it is not always true.
Update: After going through hundreds of threads via google searches, I found out the one thing that worked and unfortunately, I can’t give attribution as I closed everything and lost my cache/undo. Here is the steps I took on the Windows Vista system that made it work:
The issue turned out to be in the following policy in Windows Vista:
Start>Run>secpol.msc [enter]
Click on “Local Policies” –> “Security Options”
Navigate to the policy “Network Security: LAN Manager authentication level”
and double-click it to get its Properties. By default Windows Vista sets
the policy to “NTVLM2 responses only”. Use the drop-down arrow to change
this to “LM and NTLM ? use NTLMV2 session security if negotiated”.