We have a number of imacs connecting via smb to a windows server 2008 share. Very randomly, users will have an issue where a file that gets saved simply disappears. Other users have their index drop sometimes and become unable to search, thus needing a reindexing of the location which takes about 3 hours each time.

Preview and Recover Word Document on Mac OS X You can preview the scanned Word document anytime during scanning, so, if you find the deleted or lost Word document you can click 'pause' button or just stop the scan process, select the recovered Word files checkbox and click 'Recover' button to retrieve the lost/deleted Word document on Mac.

Finally, although it’s not an essential feature, you still can’t access It’s hard to understand why many of these quite basic features still aren’t part of the Mac product, especially something as essential as loan amortization in a personal finance software such as Quicken. Another shortcoming for home owners is that Quicken for Windows users get automatic updates of their home values, which gives a more up-to-date overview of their net worth whereas Mac users don’t since home valuation isn’t part of the product. Quicken for mac upgrades.

Lastly, users are sometimes told they cannot move/save/rename due to files being in use, even though I have confirmed that there are no open files in the specified directories. My question is if SMB the right protocol to use here?

I have tried connecting with CIFS, but it changes the path to SMB afterward (is this normal). I have also read that running a permissions repair on all of the mac systems would be advisable. Another site said using the same username and password for all users would be the way to go, but this sounds like it would create other permission issues. Thank you in advance for your help.

In relation to your query about SMB/CIFS CIFS (Common Internet File System) is a refinement of SMB (Server Message Blocks). SMB is the term for Microsoft's file sharing technology as used in Windows. CIFS was proposed by them as an 'open' version of SMB for filesharing over the Internet and is used by other platforms such as Unix. OSX includes both SMB and CIFS protocols and if you're having trouble with SMB then there may something in your setup related to Windows file sharing, perhaps WINS server settings or authentication, is not quite right, whereas the more generic CIFS is able to connect. It is not unusual to connect over CIFS and then when you look at the link it is showing as SMB afterwards. A few other points: 1. Repairing permissions on the OSX system is not-likely to make any difference to this problem as it lies with the Win 2008 server and not the local OSX files but is worthwhile doing periodically for OSX itself.

Same username and password to access the Win 2008 share narrows down the problems to one user account and if all users have the same account it is less likely to be an inter-user permission error as all users have the same account. This will not address locked files causing move/save/delete errors. The bad news is that you could fill a book with people posting on Windows, Apple and forums such as this who have the same problems with Windows shares and OSX users.

In particular the problems occur when users open and edit files directly located on the shared server. OSX applications such as Photoshop, MS Office and others tend to set locks on files while editing which do not properly get cleared/removed when the file is saved & closed as the SMB protocol does not have 100% Windows functionality. Many of the problems can be reduced by making all the OSX users login to the share with the same username and password (as all the files they edit, folders created etc.

Will have the same user ownership) but this is not always practical. Other partial solutions involve disabling and re-creating the share which can refresh permissions on the share files and subfolders or setting looser ownership/access permissions on the share when compared to the rest of the Win 2008 server. Programs like Photoshop use a swap file located on the local computer and only when you try to save to the remote server the problem occurs. I've used photoshop for years and until very recently it was downright madness to work with files that were not on the local hd. You could copy or backup to remote servers but never work directly on files located on a network.