I recently bought a macbook and I m trying to transfer info over from my windows PC, What is the network they both need to be connected to?

Question

It says they are trying to reconnect and to ensure they are on the same network, What does this mean?

Answer 1

They just need to be in the same network (either wired or wifi). Their IPs need to be on the same network.



You will probably find that you won't be able to authenticate, unless you are careful. You can mount the network share on your mac but pretty sure clear text password has to be enabled on the windows side to do this because Mac doesn't support the default authentication method.



You can probably share out the Mac side and it will look like a Windows share, you will be able to authenticate because Mac is simple password. You can't share it out as an Apple share, it must be samba (SMB).



You can use the IP number as the server "name" in either case.



Read up on samba and macs and its limitations.

Answer 2

You might find it easier to use a USB drive providing it uses a format that both PCs support. A new Mac PC will probably have the latest version of the operating system. This should be capable of reading and writing a drive formatted as FAT16 or FAT32, and also read, but not write a drive formatted as NTFS. Windows XP or later can read and write all these formats.



Providing none of your files exceeds 4 GiB minus 1 byte, then FAT32 will give you the most flexibility to transfer files in either direction. It will also allow you to keep backups on an external HDD. If you have files that are 4 GiB or larger, then you can still go from Windows to Mac using a USB drive, providing it is formatted as NTFS.



When moving large amounts of data, a USB drive (particularly if the drive and the PCs have USB3 capability) will often result in a much faster transfer many home networks can provide.



I hope this helps.

Answer 3

They have to connected in some way. You can connect them to the same router or use a crossover cable.