How to Access Windows Network Resources on OS X
One of the only things I missed about working on Windows XP was the convenience of accessing other machine’s folders and files, that were on the network, from my desktop via Windows Explorer. I knew this was more than likely possible on OS X, I just didn’t know how to do so. Until recently I got fed up with the idea of emailing every change I make to a website file to my XP machine in order to update the web server. So I decided to do some research so that I could simply access the web server, along with other network resources from my Macbook.
I’ve always used this path: \\webserver\e$ in Windows Explorer to access the web server’s E:\, Or say if I wanted to access a user’s desktop I could do: \\ACCOUNTING1XP\C$\Documents and Settings\jondoe\Desktop to view the contents of Jon Doe’s desktop from my own desktop.
The process is just as Simple in OS X. The following steps are how I gained access to the webserver from my Macbook. Remember to change “webserver” to the name of your network resource, as well as the drive letter, in my case I’m using E:\
- In the Finder, select the GO menu
- then the Connect to Server command
- Enter into the box: smb://webserver/e$
- Enter your username and password for the Windows Network
- To remember the login details, check the box to “Remember this password in my keychain”
- You should now get a Finder Window with all the folders on files on that machine
- smb://192.168.1.1.. Where this is the IP address of the machine you are trying to access.
If that didn’t work, you can try removing the trailing drive letter (/e$) or you might also want to try:
I am super happy that I didn’t lose this convenience. I had a bad feeling that Mac OS X and Windows networks wouldn’t get along so smoothly, I was obviously wrong, so far so good.
