Home Network question!

[fixerman]

On my home network my iMac is visible from my windows computers but to access any of the windows computers from the iMac I have to use Finder's "Connect to Server" option. For this I need to know the IP Address of each computer I need to access and this has to be done each time the iMac is rebooted.

Is it possible to set the iMac so that all the computers on the Home Network are visible automatically after booting up?

 

[wmprice1240]

There are a few things to try:

First thing I would do is temporarily disable your firewall you your Windows machines just to see if it's something security related. Often times firewalls as well as virus/malware protectors will block certain operations that will produce the type of issue you are seeing.

The next things I would try is:

1) On your iMac open System Preferences->Network.
2) Select whatever device (Airport or Ethernet) you use to connect to your home network
3) Click Advanced
4) You will see a tab called "WINS", select this
5) In the Workgroup combo box, enter the name of the Workgroup that your Windows machine is using. By default on older versions of Windows I believe it's WORKGROUP, with Win 7 I believe it's MSHOME. You can find this out by going to MyComputer->Properties.
6) Click ok.

The second option is probably the better bet since you can actually connect to your Windows machines via the IP address but I would give both a shot.

Also, I am assuming you have FileSharing enabled on your Windows machines and everything else works as expected.

 

[plodkiller]

Have you enabled samba as your networking protocol. Sometimes if only atp is enabled networking with windows machines is iffy. Also if you enable the network shares in your startup menu they will be there when you boot up