The first problem I experienced was the failure of Windows Vista to log into my password-protected account.  I’ll describe the process I used to get this working.

First, I opened up the Sharing preferences pane in Leopard, and checked the box next to File Sharing.  I then highlighted that entry in the window, and clicked on the button on the right hand side labeled “options…”

In Options, I enabled SMB, and checked the box next to the account I wanted to allow my Windows box to log into, and then entered my password in the ensuing dialog box.

Switching to the Vista box, I then used Windows Explorer to navigate to “Network,” the window with all the local shares. An entry called “MAC#########” (MAC followed by my mac’s hardware address) appeared, and I double-clicked it to open the login window.

When logging in,  I was confronted with a dialog box requesting user name and password.  Upon typing these in, the password was not accepted, and the user box was changed to something other than what I typed–for me, it was “Justin-PC\JC” (with JC as my username).  I had to change this to “DOMAIN\JC” and typed in my password as normal.  I was then able to access mac’s drives as network shares!

Another problem I experienced was that I initially logged in as ‘guest’ from my Vista machine, but wanting more drive access, I wanted to connect as another account.  However, disabling/enabling file sharing from the mac did not allow me to re-enter my login information, and Vista did not have an option to log out (strange, no?).  The solution was to open up a command prompt (under the start menu, go to “programs” and then “accessories,” and open it from there), then type “net use * /delete”

Using this solution, I was able to re-login to the network share.