Problems connecting to Windows Server 2003 shares from within MacOS X

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Although I’ve been connecting to Windows XP clients with no issues, each time I attempted to connect to my Windows Server 2003 (SP1) server from the Finder in MacOS X 10.4.7, I was greeted with the following message:

The alias servername could not be opened because the original item cannot be found.

There was nothing wrong with the alias (it was created automatically by OS X when browsing the network) but, as Drew McLellan outlines in his blog, the issue turns out to be related to digitally-signed SMB traffic, which must be disabled.

Strangely, the option to digitally sign communications (if client agrees) didn’t seem to make any difference, so it really is necessary to disable digitally signed communications (always). Although it would seem logical to make the change via Group Policy, this is a computer setting (so is not applied to a user account) and as Macs are not domain members they are not affected by group policy either (although the policy for the target server could be set at domain level)

Beware that if editing local policies, these are overridden by site and domain-level policies; however in this case, it’s probably best to make the change only on those servers to which access is required from a computer that doesn’t support SMB signing as the need for digitally signed communications is intended to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks from occuring and disabling this represents a security risk. Further details can be found in the Microsoft Windows Server TechCenter.

Windows Vista – how original?

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I know that imitation is reckoned to be the most sincere form of flattery, but this morning I was listening to episode 37 of the This Week in Tech podcast and my ears pricked up when the guys referred to a video doing the rounds on the ‘net with Bill Gates’ Windows Vista CES keynote over the top of some Mac OS X demonstrations.

I’ve tracked it down (on MacLive.net, although that’s not the original source of the video), and it appears that it was so popular the creator has made two follow-ups:

They’re very funny!

I’m not a Mac user, but I have previously expressed doubts about the Windows Vista interface (codenamed Aero). I also commented last month that the Aero interface seems to be a mix of the Windows XP Luna interface with hints of Apple OS X and KDE. It’s a fine line to tread between plagiarism and a familiar user interface but personally I don’t like any of those big icons.

Right now, my favourite interface is Sun Java Desktop (based on Gnome and borrowing heavily from Windows in its aesthetics and operation, but much “prettier”). I guess it’s all a trade off between user familiarly and innovation, but then Microsoft has always been good at buying other people’s ideas and then promoting them.

Getting AOL broadband to work on a Mac: part 2

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Last week I blogged about my neighbour’s problems setting up his iMac G5 to use AOL broadband. Since replacing the ADSL modem with a router he is back online, but last night we spent some time sorting out a few remaining items: transferring data; installing a printer; configuring email; and working out why some web pages refuse to load in the Safari browser.

The first two items were straightforward enough (he had an external disk which was handy for the data transfer and the OS X version of the drivers for his printer were downloaded from the ‘net), but for e-mail it’s worth knowing that AOL doesn’t use port 25 for outgoing SMTP – I found an article on sending and receiving AOL e-mail via other applications, which highlights that the SMTP port is 587 (not the standard 25) and that authorisation is required.

Finally, Safari was consistently refusing to load pages from some major websites (but working for others). I had thought of installing Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 for Mac OS X; until Stuart recommended that I installed the OS X version of Firefox, which seemed to cure the problems with browsing.

Whatever the platform, it’s the solution that counts (problems with AOL on a Mac via ADSL)

Posted on By Mark Wilson

At the danger of being flamed by Apple Macintosh fans everywhere (please don’t) – I thought Macs were supposed to be simple.

To be honest, that’s one of the reasons I didn’t get on with my iMac in the late 90s – it was too big a shift for me as a long-time Windows user (even though I had used Macs at uni’ many years before), but that was with OS 8 or 9 (I can’t remember) and I guess, being UNIX based, that OS X will also give me a command prompt?

Anyway, a couple of nights back, my neighbour, who is very proud of his new purchase – an iMac G5 – dropped by to ask if I could help him get his Mac connected to the Internet. His Windows PC connects fine, using a BT Voyager 100 ADSL modem and AOL but when he called AOL, they said they don’t provide Macintosh support. We spent a few hours looking at this and the best advice I could find was to obtain the Mac drivers for the modem and some configuration information (as well as a phone number for AOL Mac support!) from the Mac User’s forum. Unfortunately the last post at the time of writing is just a few days old and is from someone who had a working connection that has just stopped and we couldn’t get it working either.

Fast forward a couple of days and my neighbour dropped by to say that he phoned AOL and they only support dial-up connections for Macintosh users. He also found the same anecdotal evidence I had found of people who have their Macs working with AOL broadband (but not consistently). Once glimmer of hope is that net4nowt and MacUser talk about AOL Services for Macintosh, which it seems was released on 6 May 2005 as AOL Service Assistant, allowing Macintosh users to access AOL services, although the net4nowt advice seems to be to use this on a routed connection (not direct via ADSL modem).

My neighbour is now off to buy a broadband router (probably the best solution for him anyway given that he has multiple computers now) – fingers crossed that gets him on line with the Mac.

The irony of all this is that he upgraded from Windows ME to XP and couldn’t get his broadband connection working – until I downloaded the BT voyager 100 drivers for Windows XP for him a couple of weeks back! Now his Windows PC works, but the Mac he bought in frustration doesn’t… just goes to show that it doesn’t matter what platform you use, there will usually be some complications in getting the various elements of a solution to pull together (and it seems that for broadband AOL on a Mac it just won’t work at all).