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Question

networking between computers

Sep 9, 2015 8:09AM PDT

I have an Apple Mac 27 inch Intel computer and a further Windows 7 PC and a Vista PC. All of them are on a single wired LAN. I use the Windows 7 PC for CAD and the Mac for everything else. I leave the Mac turned on 24/7 in order to receive emails etc over night, but I turn of the PC when I am not using it. I rarely use the Vista machine because Vista is, to me, a disaster.

For some incomprehensible reason the PC will show up on the Mac network sometimes and not others when booted up, and although I consider myself to be computer literate (I fix the things) I simply can't find out what on earth is going on. W7 doesn't actually help much (when did Microsoft ever?) because if I select it to show the network map it always tells me that it can't be displayed. If this happened every time I might be able to get to the cause, but it seems to be intermittent and with no common factor.

I am fast reaching the point where I am considering buying another Mac and putting Parallels on it, and binning the two PCs, and I certainly won't be "upgrading" to Windows 10 as I have enough problems already. However, before I order the skip, any of you people out there have any good ideas?

Turning both machines off and on again works occasionally but rarely, but the chances are that when I boot up the W7 machine tomorrow it will again show on the Mac.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
That view!
Sep 9, 2015 8:24AM PDT

Microsoft's networking is not speedy enough to "show up" when the PC is switched on. There are long discussions why this is and for the PC I have workarounds such as tapping the F5 button (that's a refresh this window button) or waiting for the network browser to do it's thing.

That said, the easy fix is to run a server app like a FTP server and skip Windows network shares.
https://filezilla-project.org/download.php?type=server

If I didn't write it expressly, I don't expect a just booted Windows PC to show up quickly.

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Networking between computers
Sep 11, 2015 12:05AM PDT

Thanks for that -- I'll give it a try. Incidentally, it's not that it takes a long time for the PC to be recognised by the Mac but rather that it is intermittent -- sometime is appears on the network, and sometimes it doesn't.

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The intermittent is a known issue.
Sep 11, 2015 7:52AM PDT

Microsoft's implementation of the network announcement is such that if the announcement is missed then it can be 10, 45 minutes till the next announcement. In one setup the announcement is not going to happen for days.

This is all well discussed but it means that one has to learn the workarounds such as the refresh view or a command line. On Windows you can try NET VIEW to see if that refreshes the view.

I've yet to see Microsoft take this to the next level of say "It just works." They seem content with it works most of the time.

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Answer
toss Linux Mint 17 on the Vista PC
Sep 11, 2015 8:19AM PDT

It's networking setup isn't too difficult.