Re: Networking a Mac Printer

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

Jennifer Sanders wrote:
I'm on a network where the printer is hooked up to a Mac on the OSX operating system. I'm connecting with my XP machine over a wireless connection. The wireless router is connected to the same hub as the Mac's ethernet connection. I can't browse to the Mac over the network. I can only get to the workgroup level. How can I connect to the Mac to print from XP?

I'll give you instructions for connecting to the Mac. I don't have any printers connected locally, so I can't walk you through the rest of the printer parts. First, create the same user account and password that's on Vista onto the Mac. Make sure the printer is shared and you've set up Samba sharing on the Mac. Here's a link that will help you if you don't know how to set Samba sharing in OS X:

http://www.macwindows.com/

And this Google search has many more useful links:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=share+Mac+Windows&btnG=Google+Search

Now, for the rest of it:

From Michael Bishop (MS) - Basically, the issue with Samba and Vista is that Vista no longer permits LM or NTLM authentication by default; only NTLMv2. Samba versions 1.x and 2.x only support LM and NTLM, so there's an issue there.

Recommended solution: upgrade to Samba 3.x and enable NTLMv2 by adding "client ntlmv2 auth = yes" to your smb.conf file. Because of another issues with previous versions, I strongly recommend upgrading to 3.0.22 or later regardless of your choice for this particular instance.

Alternate solution: change Vista's security settings to permit lower-security authentications. (as below and what I did)

To enable Windows Vista to connect to Mac OS X with Windows File Sharing enabled, you will need to change the following policy in Windows Vista:

Start>Run>secpol.msc [enter]

Click on "Local Policies" --> "Security Options"

Navigate to the policy "Network Security: LAN Manager authentication level" and double-click it to get its Properties. By default Windows Vista sets the policy to "NTVLM2 responses only". Use the drop-down arrow to change this to "LM and NTLM – use NTLMV2 session security if negotiated".

In Vista Home Premium, you won't have this tool so per Steve Winograd, do:

1. Run the registry editor and open this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa

1. If it doesn't already exist, create a DWORD value named
LmCompatibilityLevel

3. Set the value to 1

4. Reboot

And here are some more notes I got from one of the newsgroups which may help you with the printing part. The "speaker" isn't me.

****
Issue 2: You cannot connect to a Vista-shared printer from Mac. I used to use the Advanced username:password@server/printer method and, no matter what I did, I could not get this to work with Vista. Ultimately what I had to do was to install the lpd service on the Vista machine (included on my Home Premium DVD) and set the Mac up to connect to that instead. Now it works like a charm.

Issue 3: After I got those two things working I would go to transfer larger video files between the PC and Mac and it would go VERY slow and fail half the time. We are talking 250kilobits/sec on a theoretically 54Mbit wireless connection. I never seemed to have such speed problems in the past. Per some internet research I made two changes to my Mac - one to the /etc/smb.conf file and the other to some TCP settings in /etc/sysctl.conf file.
1.) Add "large readwrite=no" to the [global] section of /etc/smb.conf
2.) create a /etc/sysctl.conf with the following inside it
net.inet.tcp.sendspace=65536
net.inet.tcp.recvspace=65536
net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0
net.inet.udp.recvspace=73728

The most important thing seems to be the net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0 - on UNIX systems and Macs they will hold off on sending ACKs to save Network/CPU usage and it is a good thing. Windows however seems to wait on things until it gets ACKSs with SMB and so it kills performance. After making these settings changes my SMB connection speed to my Vista box is unbelievably improved - things that were taking almost an hour before are done in like 5 minutes.
****

Don't forget, you'll need Vista printer drivers. Get them from the printer mftr.


Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
.

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