[Ken_Down_Under]

I'm new to the Apple world and have been brought into the 21st century by my wife who bought an iMac running OS X 10.4.11 a few months ago (two weeks before the latest model and price cuts.... Damn.).

Anyway, as a newbie, I'm trying to work out how to share printers and disks on our networked XP based PCs with the Apple and vice versa. Sharing disks and printers between PCs seems very easy, but because of my inexperience I'm struggling with the Apple. I've managed to share a printer attached to the Apple with the PC world but have to reconfigure the PCs if the network is shut down and the Apple restarts with a different IP address. I tried hardwiring the IP address on the iMac but that didn't seem to work. And I haven't a clue how to access data on the PC drives from the iMac or on the iMac from the PCs. If Microsoft can make networking so easy then how hard can it be?

Any ideas, or pointers to an Idiots Guide?

[SoltoN]

its actually easier on the mac than it is on a PC. Simply click on the apple at the top left, system preferences, and sharing. It is all pretty strait forward from there. you shouldn't have to set static addresses for the mac, it should show up in my network places in XP automatically. However if you are setting static IP addresses, do it through your router by MAC address, not on the computers themselves.

[Ken_Down_Under]

Many thanks Shaw!! But I think I may be doing something wrong.....

I clicked on the Apple, then system preferences and sharing as you said. I then selected 'Personal File Sharing', 'Windows Sharing' and 'Printer Sharing'. On the XP machine I cannot see any of the Apple disk space from My Network Places and conversely I cannot see any of the shared disk space on the XP machine from the Apple. Presumably I would be able to see XP space from Finder? The Apple attached printer seems to be accessible from the XP machine. Sounds like I may have missed a step somewhere. Any suggestions??

[SoltoN]

do you have bonjour installed on your windows machines?

http://www.apple.com/support/downloa...orwindows.html

It will make everything play nice.

There is an apple support forum for the problems you are experiencing, you will probably find more relevant information quicker there than here. (not a huge apple userbase here)

http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=576