Snow Leopard can see Windows shares in Finder but can't connect

Posted by Randy Miller on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Randy Miller
Published on 2010-11-06T21:26:28Z Indexed on 2011/11/22 10:01 UTC
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I have an iMac with the latest version of Snow Leopard on it. I have a NAS drive and a Windows machine that both show up in the Finder's 'Shared' section. However, if I click on them, Finder says "Connection Failed". Clicking on 'Connect As...' gives an error dialog that says "The server 'blah' may not exist or it is unavailable at this time."

Points of interest:

  1. All machines are receiving their IP/DNS info from the router using DHCP.
  2. I have a Mac Mini on the same network that connects to the NAS drive and windows machine perfectly with no config (i.e. worked out of the box).
  3. Both Macs are on the same version of Snow Leopard.
  4. There is no password required to access the NAS share.
  5. I've never setup a WINS server on any machines and all machines are using 'workgroup' by default.
  6. I've tried putting "workgroup" in the Mac's workgroup entry and have tried leaving it blank, neither solves the problem.

Here are some things I have tried:

  1. Finder->Connect To Server: smb:///share. This works, but by name does not.
  2. Terminal->mount_smbfs //@/share share. This also works by ip, but not be name, resulting in "mount_smbfs: server connection failed: No route to host".
  3. If I put the IP address of the NAS in the WINS server entry in the Mac's network setup, I can connect by name.

It obviously seems to be a name resolution error, but I can't figure out why. The only thing that has changed since it used to work is that I got a new router that now gives out DHCP (all machines are dhcp clients) addresses of 192.168.x.x, but used to be 10.0.x.x. I've grep'd through everything that might have saved that old address, but can't find anything. It's also worth noting that the second Mac (the one that connects successfully) was added to the network after the router change.

Please let me know if there are additional points of information needed to troubleshoot this further.

Thanks,

Randy

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