Greetings, new forum member and proud owner of my first ever Apple products, a new 20" iMac purchased last Friday (my procrastination paid off! Saved money and scored 4th gen iMac).

Also bought an Airport Extreme with the intention of sharing files with my existing PC, sharing printer and internet connection.

I plugged it all in, installed the Airport software on both machines and the internet is sharing perfectly (even sharing with my Wii in another room, wirelessly. Bonus!) Set Airport software on both machines to enable sharing plus same on Windows xp, to no avail.

But I cannot get either machine to see each other to share files. Likewise, neither machine can see the USB printer (an Epson CX3700) when it is plugged into the Airport Extreme.

If someone could offer any assistance or tips to this Apple newbie I would really appreciate your ideas, time and effort.

(I am going to attend some of the upcoming training sessions from a certain [beloved on this forum] reseller to gain more confidence in the various iMac software but this one has me stumped)

Cheers, Matthew

You have to enable sharing on the Mac as to see it's files on the Windows box.

So in the System Preferences, hit the Sharing preference and enable Windows file sharing. Then go to your PC, enter in the IP address like it says and you should see your Mac user's home directory.

To get the printer going on the Mac, again, go into the System Preferences, click the Print & Fax preference, click the + button and from memory, printers shared over USB on the AirPort Extreme should come up as a Bonjour device - meaning it will automagically appear in the list. You will also need to install the driver from the Epson site first before it will actually print anything.

Thank you for your prompt advice, I shall check all those things this evening. I note the CX3700 printer driver on the Epson website does not offer a Mac version, only PC. I presume that can still be installed on the iMac? The list of Epson printers already loaded on the iMac skips this exact model printer so my other resort is to try a similar model until one works.

If there's no Mac driver, you're outta luck (Unless you want to fiddle with CUPS) - you may get some success trying compatabile ones, but that's not fun.

Did you get the printer with the Mac, or did you have it beforehand?

Had printer for about two years with the PC. I hope I can get this whole thing working painlessly and without too much hassle because I built my own PC and was tempted to do so again but went iMac.

Am hoping they are both as compatible as the sales people said. No I don't trust sales people but I hope that mis-trust was misplaced.

(So far the benefits of PC's seem to be being able to add an extra HDD replacement DVD burner myself for not much dollars. Did so two weeks ago for $35 DVD burner and $105 for 320Gb HDD. The iMac is great design and interesting software but if the DVD burner dies I'm in a little trouble and if I need an extra HDD I've got to look for external solutions. Or in my case, I now have over 500Gb in HDD's in my PC so I'll keep them loaded up and just current stuff on the iMac.)

PS: I note many complaining that they don't like the glossy screen on this 4th Gen iMac. As a user, I think it's just fine and the machine is great eye candy. And this keyboard is sweeeet.

On a similar note, does anyone know if you can hook up two USB printers to an Airport Extreme base station using a USB double-adapter?

Quick and easy: Install Bonjour for Windows. It will suddenly be able to see the printer, whatever Mac or Apple device is sharing it.

I did note when I installed the Airport software on my PC it included Bonjour . . . now I'll check it out.

I am no expert at all but when I was buying the Airport Extreme the guy at the retailer did say you could connect a USB hub to it if you needed more than one USB device attached to it . . . ?

You can, though some people have had issues with doing that. Can't remember offhand if that was fixed by a firmware upgrade for the AE.

Jumping in here - newbie with Mac stuff........ BF has an iMac, I have a Toshiba laptop running on XP and we have just set up our airport extreme base station.

Our broadband connection is via satellite and we want to share our Lexmark E232 laser printer.

The laptop has no problems connecting to the internet via the AEBS but with airport utility it is not really seeing the AEBS and certainly doesn't see the printer.
Bonjour doesn't even see the printer even though the imac sees everything and actually it was through the iMac that we got the AEBS to kick in and start after close to an hour of flashing amber light and no action!

I have tried to "manually install" the AEBS - it just goes through the motions of looking for it and then it appears in a grayed out look on the left column with an amber button but does nothing else and keeps giving the error message "-4" after all the looking and searching during the "manual install"

I am at my wits end and just frustrated because the laptpo can't even download the 7.012(?) firmware upgrade which somehow just miraculously appeared on the iMac......

HELP!

thanks

After reading a few of these threads it would seem that Windows XP does not like APE stations. My Toshiba laptop has Windows Vista and has had no issues.