Saturday, August 11, 2012

Connecting to a WIndows 7 FIleShare From MAC 10.8

So I started using a MacBook Air recently running Mountain Lion.  I attempted to connect to my Windows 7 file shares but could not.  I assumed that the issue was with my Mac as my other Windows Systems had no issues, nor did my linux systems.  Through investigations it was revealed that by altering the way windows handles memory used by file sharing on the Windows 7 system, the issue is resolved.  On the Windows 7 system, I had to set HKLM\System\CCS\LanmanServer\Parameters\Size from 1 to 3.  The settings for this control how the host handles memory devoted to file shares.  There are three possible values:
  1: Minimize the Memory Used
  2: Balance
  3: Maximize throughput for file sharing.

On my windows 7 host it was set to 1, when I tried to connect to if from the Mac Finder all I get is a message connection failed.  Using the command line smbutil view //  I get a insufficient memory error.  When I changed the above setting and restarted the Windows 7 host, all my problems went away....