Accessing Mac OS X Windows Sharing from Vista

Windows Vista will not work with Mac OS X Windows file sharing support by default. If you attempt to access a folder shared from Mac OS X, Vista will display a logon error repeatedly.

The problem is that Vista, by default, will only use NTLMv2 for authentication, which is not supported by Mac OS X's Windows Sharing service.

To get around this:

1. In Vista, open the Control Panel
2. Switch to "Classic" view
3. Double-click Administration Tools
4. Double-click Local Security Policy
5. Expand "Local Policies" and select "Security Options"
6. Locate "Network Security: LAN Manager Authentication Level" in the list and double-click it.
7. Change the setting from "Send NTMLv2 response only" to "Send LM & NTLM - use NTLMv2 session if negotiated"
8. Click OK

Now you should be able to access your Mac OS X shares.

You might also have this problem accessing Samba shares on Linux or Unix systems running an older version of Samba. The same fix should work in this case as well. Current versions of Samba support NTLMv2.