Browsing Network

Hi.

I've had this macbook pro (15" Mid 2010, i5 CPU, 4Gb RAM, 10.6.5) for a month or so now and gotten used to everything just fine. There's just one issue I can't figure out.

My network consists of 8 laptops running a mixture of Vista and Windows 7. There's also a Windows 7 Pro machine acting as a file server. All the machines are part of the same Windows workgroup, and can see each other in Network Neighborhood.

However, on the mbp when I select Go->Network it's always empty. I've chosen the workgroup in Network->Advanced - I didn't need to type it, just selected it from the drop down box.

I can access any machine with Go->Connect to Server, then type in its name. Also, in terminal for some machines I can "ping machinename" while for others I must "ping machinename.local".

Normally it wouldn't bother me, but it's useful for me to see which machines are turned on and connected to the network. I've searched all over the place and found many posts from people with the same problem, but nothing has worked for me yet...

Any help would be appreciated,
Mike

Not entirely sure if the was the correct way to( i a new to mac as well with a little unix/linux ex) but I put local and workgroup in my search domains under network settings

Hope that helps

Have you typed in the workgroup name under the wins section in network preferences/advanced?

Thanks for the replies.

Yes, I have the workgroup selected in the network preferences. However, I think I've discovered something a little weird... Should nmbd be taking up so much CPU time? If I restart it, it takes virtually no resources. However if I close the lid and put the mbp to sleep, next time I come to use it it's using 95% CPU again...