Impossible to connect to shared folders from Windows XP to Mac OS X 10.10 I am trying to set up a Macbook running Yosemite 10.10.5 and a PC running Windows XP in order to share some folders on my home network. Briefly summarizing, I have defined a constant IP they will use to connect themselves to the network. Then, the shared folders have been set up: on Mac OS, using the Preferences &gt; Sharing board and on Windows through the Properties &gt; Sharing &gt; Advanced Sharing menu. All works fine when I request a connection from the Macbook to the PC: I use Finder &gt; Connect to a Server, filling the blank line with smb://IP_OF_THE_PC and then inserting the username and the password of the account that is sharing these data. On the contrary, doing the inverse procedure, I mean requesting a connection from the PC to the Macbook - launching the command \\IP_OF_THE_MAC from the Start menu, the configuration seems to not work. Sincerely, I am a bit surprised because the same configuration was fine when I was running Mavericks 10.9 and so I suppose that all this is due to some modification introduced by Yosemite itself. In the end, can someone suggest me other parameters I should check and/or edit to allow the right functioning of all this?
Releasing Mac OS X Yosemite, Apple has updated the SMB protocol to version 3, as documented here. Windows XP, on his side, works almost certainly with the SMB 1 protocol, because the upgrade to version 2 has been done on Windows Vista, as mentioned here. The backward compatibility allows SMB 3 to connect to previous versions, but not viceversa.
This issue can be solved using Samba, a free and open source implementation of the SMB protocol that assures full compatibility between different operative systems.
It is possible to install and manage Samba on Mac OS installing SMBUp.