Connecting to PC from Mac over a network

Hi I am switching to Macs after many years as PC User. I am trying to connect my new Mac to a PC over a network, following the instructions on thye 101 page at Apple. However, although I can get my old PC to access my Mac, I cannot do it the other way round. I get an error message "The alias "Sony" could not be opened because the original item cannot be found"
Very frustrating! I am not yet savvy enough with Macs to sort it!

I had no trouble getting my Mac Mini to access my old HP laptop. Maybe check your Workgroup name on the PC. Do you see the PC in the OS X finder and you get the message when you click the connect button?

Please post more info, what version of OS X, what version of Windows, what hardware and any other details would be helpful.

Have you enabled your pc for sharing?

PC Sharing

The folders are certainly down for sharing. Is there also a global switch on the PC i need to set?

Thanks

Andy

I'm stilll trying to figure out what Sony has to do with your PC - Mac network issue...welcome to Mac-Forums BTW...

Sony

Sony is thename of the windows machine. Nice dog BTW

if you enabled sharing for a folder goto Finder window and hit Command + k (alternatively select GO > Connect to Server). This should bring up a popup window. Now type smb://<ip address of your PC> (eg. smb://192.168.1.5) and hit connect. On the next window you may have to enter the login anme & pw for your PC (if you have a one)

Solved

My son (who studies maths with physics) has solved it - he writes:

The problem seems to have been caused by the uninstallation of Norton Antivirus on the XP machine, which altered a registry key related to windows shares. Simply following the Microsoft KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/177078 fixed it, the key in question was missing completely, I created it and set it to 15, which didn't work, but raising it to 20 seems to have fixed everything.

Hope this is useful to someone else!