The Halo Effect

I took the plunge today and bought the Mac I’ve been wanting ever since Tiger was released. It’s a 12” Combo-drive Powerbook; when closed, it’s small enough to hide under an A4 sheet. Oddly enough, it weighs the same as my old 14” Dell. It’s been a pretty good experience so far. I’ve moved my iTunes library, and I’m now looking for a decent Mac RSS reader. Mail.app is picking up all my mail; I can access my shared files on my Windows server (after a bit of work), and Remote Desktop is installed so I can remotely run Outlook on my desktop. Read on for the one problem I ran into; watch this space for more notes.

I ran into one hitch, though, which will be recorded here for Google posterity. I couldn’t connect my Mac to my Windows 2003 domain controller and file server. It turns out that the problem is because SMB signing is now enabled by default on Windows 2003 domain controllers, and the version of Samba that ships with Macs can’t cope with SMB signing. The fix:

  1. On your Win2K3 server, edit the Group Policy key Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options\Microsoft Network Server: Digitally Sign Communications (always) to be Disabled;

  2. Jump into the registry and set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanManServer\Parameters\RequireSecuritySignature to 0 (zero)

Now, try reconnecting to the server from your Mac; it should work without needing any reboots.