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Mocean · Dec 8, 2007, 12:20 AM

Greeting all. I am a new Mac convert and loving my 24inch machine. Learning a lot about OSX and the Mac world in general and have found this forum to be a gold mine.

Anyway, I have my Mac set up using Airport Extreme for a wireless internet connection. Now I want to connect my PC using a cable to the Airport Extreme to share the internet connection and to be able to share files between the computers.

Is this possible and if so can someone point me in the right direction.

There is a lot of info around on how to do it using wireless for both computers but my old PC (XP) isnt wireless.

Any help appreciated!
Cheers
Mocean

ghporter · Dec 8, 2007, 09:10 AM

It's easy. Plug the ethernet cable from the PC into the LAN port on your Extreme, and your PC will now be able to share the Internet connection.

To share files, you have to enable file sharing on both computers. On your Mac, open System Preferences and select Sharing. Check the boxes for Personal File Sharing and Windows File Sharing. Now on the PC, you need to do two things. The first one is crazy-weirdly placed; in Explorer, choose View from the menu, then select Folder options. Scroll all the way down and UNSELECT "Use Simple File Sharing". Now you can choose any folder and right-click on it, choose Sharing, and share it. (It's a bad idea to choose the root of a drive for a lot of reasons...)

I hope that helped.

Mocean · Dec 8, 2007, 06:29 PM

Thank you so much. Ill give it a try.

besson3c · Dec 8, 2007, 07:05 PM

Mocean: just so you know, there is really no such thing as an "Airport Extreme network". Airport Extreme is just what Apple calls their wireless router, but this router sends out the same standard 802.11b/g signal as any other wireless router. Therefore, any machine with support for 802.11b or 802.11g wireless networking can access your network providing that it is configured to allow new clients.

If a machine claims to support wireless network, you can also just assume that it is talking about the same standard - anything else would be *extremely* hard to come by, if it even exists.

Mocean · Dec 9, 2007, 06:05 AM

Thanks fellas, got it working pretty easily. Having a few headaches with utorrent but apart from that all is good.
Is it ok to leave Airport Extreme on all the time? It seems to get pretty warm. When I go to work I just put he Mac to sleep - I dont disconnect the internet.

ghporter · Dec 9, 2007, 12:59 PM

As long as there's plenty of room around the Extreme for cooling, it should be fine staying on 24/7. My network stuff stays on all the time (unless I'm WAY out of town or something) and it's going on a couple of years with only an occasional restart.

headhog70 · Dec 16, 2007, 05:09 PM

I'm also interested in a network of Macs and PCs. I'm also new to the Mac.

I could not find Folder Options under the View option in Windows Explorer. There is a Folder Options under the Tools Option, but this does not have any choices for using simple file sharing. I found some information on simple file sharing on page 946 of my 1200-page simplified Windows Manual. The bible... I mean manual, states Windows XP Home Edition uses Simple File Sharing exclusively. Only the Professional Edition allows you to select classic sharing over simplified. This Windows manual makes a great door stop.

I found information on file sharing using the Help option in Windows Explorer. I entered "simple file sharing" in the search box. I'm not sure if any of the help topics will help PC to Mac networking. I have not had time to work on it.

I'm waiting for Network Magic to support Leopard. Then I'll give that a try.

ghporter · Dec 16, 2007, 08:15 PM

Yes, I messed up on that one-it is TOOLS, not View. They're equally stupid places to put a global networking setting, and I got them confused.

In Pro you go to Tools|Folder Options|View, and scroll down to the bottom, where you find the "Use simple file sharing (Recommended)".

And since you didn't say you had Home, I didn't think about it or the limitations on XP Home... Sorry about that.

headhog70 · Dec 17, 2007, 09:07 AM

After about an hours work, I got my two PCs talking to each other. My PC laptop has always been a problem for some reason. I had to turn off the Windows Firewall, then turn off the Norton Internet Security Firewall. Then I had to turn on the Norton firewall and try to connect. This of course failed. Then I turn off the firewall, turn on the firewall and try to connect. After I did this three times, without swearing, it worked. Somehow, I must have trained the Norton Firewall. It was also necessary to reboot the laptop after I got it working. The Windows Firewall on the other PC (a desktop), does not affect the networking, but the Windows Firewall on the laptop does effect the networking connection. Both versions of Windows are the same... but different. This makes perfect sense to Windows users, and should be expected.

Now, to get my Mac Pro running Leopard to "see" the PC desktop and be able to download files from it. This is the main objective because I'm going to replace that POS with a Mac. I go to Finder, click on Go, then click on Computer. The two PC computers show up on the left under Shared. Click on the PC Desktop and there are the shared files I want to transfer to the Mac. This took about 5, or maybe 6 seconds. It just works. My wife thinks I'm a genius. I'm taking the rest of the day off.