Mac OS X - browsing and connectivity issues with Windows Vista / 7 and Server 2008

If your Mac OS X does not see and/or can not access shared Windows folders it may be due to compatibility issues with the new SMB 2.0 protocol implemented by Microsoft in Windows Vista / 7 and Server 2008 operating systems... Following Microsoft support article has an automatic "Fix It" solution in the middle of the page: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975517

In case above link no longer works we are providing manual solution below (we assume you are comfortable with basic editing of your Windows registry). Click Start, Run, type REGEDIT and navigate to:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters

Now, create new DWORD Value and name it Smb2 (your value will be set to 0 by default). 

At this point you can save and close everything down, reboot your computer... Upon reboot give it a few minutes for your Mac to detect your shared Windows resources.

If you want to re-enable SMB 2.0 protocol on your Windows computer/s go back to your new registry value and change it from 0 to 1. Do not forget to reboot your computer/s for new setting to take effect.

Please keep in mind that we have spent some time making sure that Networking and SMB on our Macs are set-up correctly and we could ping our networked PCs.