Jennifer Hearing would like to have her Mac connect to a PC that has access to a Wi Fi connection:

My sister and I moved into an apartment that offers wireless Internet. Here PC can pick up the wireless signal in her room, but my room is too far away to get the signal. Since we are not "plugged in" to the hub station, I am trying to find a way to connect to her PC from my MAC so I can get the Internet connection.

I looked into AirPort Express, but was told it works only if the modem/main router is the Extreme, which my apartment manager doesn't have.

My Mac: G5 OS X 10.4.10

If you can provide some advice

We've updated our Virtualization, Emulation, and Remote Control Solutions page by adding to the product listings two free cross-platform remote control apps.

Daniel Stine recommended CoRD:

I found macwindows.com's emulation page today and found that the remote desktop software I use was not listed. I use the open source CoRD remote desktop, which is an Aqua port of rdesktop, which you did include.

A representative of Seeng described his organization's free, web-based remote control solution:

We developed a free solution to control remote computers. It's oriented to make it in a easy way, without hard configurations. So, users don't have to configure ports, routers, etc, in order to make it work. You only need to register and download the remote client. And then the computer with this client can be controlled from anywhere using a web browser; the web client is made in Flash.

If you've tried either of these

ooVoo last week released a Mac version of its video chat solution, ooVoo Mac. The free download allows a user to connect to six Mac and Windows users over the Internet. ooVoo can send and receive video messages, exchange files and text chat messages as well as import contacts from other programs.

ooVoo provides video with a resolution of 320 x 240 at up to 30 frames per second, but requires a standard broadband connection of only 128 Kbps (up and down) of bandwidth.

Rob Kunkle is having a problem with VMware Fusion loading Windows XP 64-bit. He also found a workaround:

I was having this problem, but the error I get is "line 64: Syntax error." This was with Fusion 1.1 and Leopard with FileVault. It seemed to happen after clicking suspend.

Very frustrating because I could not open the PC and I needed some of the work that's on it. I've tried this work around: creating the config file, then putting the "main.mem" line. No luck, doesn't change anything.

I was tearing my hair out for a while, but I found a solution. Since VMware Fusion wouldn't open the file, I started fresh and created another virtual machine, using the first one as the source. I put the new virtual machine off the encrypted partition, and everything is working fine.

The only problem with the new virtual machine is that it won't connect to the shared drive on the mac host. I downloaded 1.1.2, but it didn't fix the problem. I still get the error when I try to open the first virtual machine.

We note that VMware Fusion 1.1.1 was to have fixed a conflict between Fusion and Leopard's FileVault

If you've seen this problem or tried this suggestion

Leigh Wilson finds that an AutoCAD license in Windows via Boot Camp keeps getting lost:

I am having problems with my AutoCAD revit license staying intact on my registry. It gives a licensing error message and then asks me to get the software registered or it will expire in 7days. The problem occurs only on boot camp and not in Parallels, which also has my AutoCAD software...

David Kim had problems Leopard and file sharing over a wireless connection. He tried several of suggestions on our Leopard Tips and Reports page, and sent us a new one:

I've been reading this discussion on several occasions over the last few months. It is very helpful. Several of the fixes resulted in transient improvements. Most helpful was the delete/recreate location workaround.

However, the key fix for me (stable for 2 weeks now) has been to replace my router software. I had been running DD-WRT v23 and later v24RC6 (the worse offender) on a LinkSys WRT54GL WDS system (a popular choice).

I switched to the Tomato firmware and haven't had a single glitch since. It is a world of difference for both of my Macs. Also, this product is excellent in many other respects.

If you've seen a similar effect

Dave verified a previously reported fix for a Leopard problem with files disappearing from mounted Windows shares. The fix cleared up some other symptoms as well. Dave reports:

I had a server with three Macs and many a few PCs on it. Our temp used one folder alone for hundreds of files, but some of her folders and files were not visible everywhere. The PCs and OS 10.4 Macs can see all the files fine.

The 10.5 Mac had these issues:

• Sometimes could not see all folders
• Opening a folder found zero items inside (even though they existed)
• Folders would show wrong dates, 0k, and blank icons
• Clicking off the folder made all the blank icon folders disappear completely

After much searching I found your site with this recent solution: The file names have a space at the end. Remove the spaces and the files/folders all show up properly. It worked perfectly.

Prosoft Engineering has released NetWare Client for Mac OS X 2.0.1, and update that adds full support for Mac OS X Leopard. The update is a free download to owners of NetWare Client 2.0.

The Prosoft NetWare client previously was incompatibile with Leopard. This current version has been in beta since December.

Peter Shindler discovered a simple workaround to the problem of Windows shares disappearing from Leopard:

I am the IT manager of a company, and we have several Mac users in the office. We have shared folders on of our servers, and this problem was happening.

What I have found that helps is to create an alias of the share. When the share disappears, click on the alias, and it reestablishes the share-it pops back up right away.

If you've tried this

Ray Drury found that the name of the folders on a shared Windows Vista machine caused trouble with Leopard access:

We have a Vista share which we access via our Macs. It all works fine under OS 10.4.11 but our new Mac running Leopard 10.5.2 mysteriously can't see some of the folder contents within a share on the Vista PC. The symptoms are, click on a folder and no contents are shown, when you click away the folder disappears. After lots of hair-pulling, we have discovered that the folders in question have a 'space' at the end of their name, removing this space allows the folders to be viewed as they should.

If you've tried this

David Sly tried a suggestion regarding Leopard file copy, unsuccessfully, but other suggestions worked:

In response to the topic "Path Finder utility gets around Leopard zero-k file copy-to-server problem," it did not work for me. Yet Thursby's DAVE and ADmitMac, and SBMclient via the terminal do work for me.

Dave (no last name) reported the Leopard 10.5.2 file copy/SMB signing problem to Apple, which replied that this was a known problem:

I have the issue with OS X, where by I can't write to NTFS shares on W2K3 servers with SMB signing turned on, even with IPV6 disabled for the interface. I haven't tried turning the signing off (as suggested by some of your readers), but that's a ridiculous fix (good luck convincing your domain admins to downgrade their enterpise security for OSX users).

To recreate the issue:

Create a folder named test that contains two files one named ._test.txt and test.txt on OSX and copy to an SMB share on W2k3.

This results in spurious errors about permissions and locked files.

Copying a file larger than 4k results in the error:

"The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges or some of the items."

Using mount_smbfs from a shell on OSX results in the error: "Permission denied"

Using smbclient from a shell on OSX results in SUCCESS!!!

If you do need to drag and drop in your gui world, Thursby's DAVE will work, though it'll cost you $120

This is the response I had from Apple:

Hello Dave,

After further investigation it has been determined that this is a known issue, which is currently being investigated by engineering. This issue has been filed in our bug database under the original Bug ID# 5635546...

Eltima Software has released SyncMate 1.2 (Build 1.2.0.324), an update to the utility for syncing data between a Mac-to-Windows Mobile handheld devices. The update adds the ablity to sync email, contacts, and notes with Entourage, and the ability to sync bookmarks with Firefox. The new version also can sync multiple calendars in iCal, and adds a number of other enhancements and bug fixes.

In addition to syncing documents, folders, contacts, calendar entries, SyncMate has several unique features not found with other syncing solutions. SyncMate is able to send, receive, create and delete SMS text messages when working at the Mac. Another unique feature is the synchronization of Stickies on Mac OS X with Notes on Pocket PC.