Ravings from a Man in an Old White House

I have an iMac G5 running OS X Tiger (10.4.10) and a Windows machine, a laptop, running XP SP2. I decided to back-up my iTunes library from the PC to the Mac using the simplest protocol available to me: Windows File Sharing, a/k/a SMB, a/k/a Samba. From the PC’s perspective, everything was grand. The Mac was having trouble. The Mac had no problem finding the PC on the network, and would even show the icon for the share in the sidebar and on the desktop. When the share was selected, all it would show is a blank page and “0 items” in the Status Bar. The error message in console.log was as follows:

mount_smbfs: error from NetrSareEnum call: exception = 382312522
Date and time Macname automount[155]: Cannot mount URL ’smb://WORKGROUP;PCNAME‘ for /Network/Workgroup/Pcname (UI not allowed)
Date and time Macname automount[155]: Attempt to mount /Network/Workgroup/Pcname returned 1 (not permitted)

Two suggestions I found on the internet, increasing the IRPStackSize and changing Local Policy Security options, did not work for me. Another did: setting a password for the account I was accessing on the Windows machine. In other words, all I had to do was go to User Accounts in Control Panel and set a password, then use it from the Mac. For whatever reason, a blank password was not good enough.

This odd because I used to use the Mac on another network and had no problem connecting to other computers. I didn’t even use existing accounts on the PCs. Maybe I have the Guest account disabled on my PC and that is causing the problem. That may mean turning the guest account on is a fourth solution. If I remember to check, I’ll report back.

I know I could have pushed data from the PC to the Mac, and I did while I was solving the problem. In the end, I just have more faith in the Mac when moving large amounts of data. Windows Explorer gets unstable, wastes my time, and makes me figure out what still needs to be copied. Even if Finder, the Mac equivalent screws-up, it will let me say “no to all” instead of re-copying the data it finished before screwing-up.

I doubt my post here will be easy for people who have this problem to find, but I am including tips for the other two solutions below just in case:

IRPStackSize

Microsoft has instructions for increasing the IRPStackSize. Please note that this involves editing the registry. If you are not comfortable doing so, ask a friend who knows a lot about computers for help.

SMB Signatures

The second suggestion involves changing security settings involving SMB signing. Microsoft has a somewhat helpful article on the subject. The tip originally came from Apple’s Cat: 

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