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I've been looking up this question online, but I can't seem to find a good walkthrough.

I have a Mac OS X 10.6.9 Snow Leopard (laptop), and I want to transfer a few gigs of stuff to my Windows 7 PC (desktop). I have a LAN cable which I'd prefer to use in transferring these files.

I'd love some input on how to do this from anyone who's done this before.

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  • Is it a crossed LAN cable? (It should say so on the cable itself)
    – slhck
    Nov 21, 2011 at 8:34
  • I don't know, it's a typical cat5 cable. The type that hooks a computer to another computer, or a computer to a router.
    – Vadoff
    Nov 21, 2011 at 8:50
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    @slhck: aren't most NICs auto-MDIX nowadays?
    – RedGrittyBrick
    Nov 21, 2011 at 8:51
  • @Red Duh. Of course. It's been a while since my last real networking experience :)
    – slhck
    Nov 21, 2011 at 9:59

1 Answer 1

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I've only done this between a Windows and a Linux machine via a regular twisted-pair ethernet cable. What I did was assign a static IP to each (like 1.1.1.1, 1.1.1.2), same subnet and set the gateway to the opposite counterparts (1.1.1.1 gw -> 1.1.1.2, etc). For that you would need to edit the properties of a corresponding device in ncpa.cpl (start -> run) and the interfaces file on OSX. You would need some service to be deployed in order to actually transfer the files. I used the Windows implementation of the SMB protocol (File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks), hence Windows acting as the serving host (thus no need for Client for Microsoft Networks). Then I just mounted the Windows share as CIFS on my client host and that's that.

Oh, yeah, firewall.cpl might need some adjustments. For testing purposes, ping might be desirable as well for connectivity testing between your hosts.

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    If you start up a network with two client PCs (and no static config and no DHCP service) don't they assign themselves zero-config addresses in the range 169.254.xxx.xxx. Do you need a gateway configured if all traffic is to/from computers in the same LAN (i.e. same subnet)?
    – RedGrittyBrick
    Nov 21, 2011 at 10:24
  • @RedGrittyBrick: yes, you are definitely right about that :) I mainly used the preconfigured IPs for their simplicity (1.1.x.x vs 169.254.x.x) - basically, just to input less when manually accessing the share :P (browsing excluded). But that actually makes me do more, count to think of it.. Guess I just never trusted the zero-configuration :-) Time to change my mind. And about the gateway, well, I think that might just be my misconception - was always under the impression that Windows` network properties box would not close unless the gw was there. I'll take that into account now, thanks!
    – XXL
    Jan 5, 2012 at 14:57

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