Network woes with Server 2003

First off, Hi.
Second, i have 2 machines, an Apple Dual 1gig G4 i use 99.99% of the time. And a PC with Windows Server 2003.
I used to use Windows products all the time, but just switched to mac for Video editing reasons, since then i have fallen out of the loop until i built a small server for web and video hosting.

Now im running into a problem with the MS machine.

I have the 2 machines set up through a linksys router, both get web connections, the mac saw the MS box for 2 hours, and the MS box never saw the Mac. I cant figure out for the life of me why either wont network together. The Server 2003 software brags about easy network configurations, but it has been the opposite.

Now, SMB on the Mac wont reconize the MS box, and i tried Dave software as well.
The MS box is pointless right now, ive shared the proper folders, and tried everything else to get it to see the Mac, let be part of the network.

I tried something else. I had a friend bring his MS box over one day and installed my Server 2003 on it, not only did it talk to the mac, but it would not talk to the other MS box...what gives? Again it lasted for 2 hours.

I know im setting up the Mac right, i had an older Dell Poweredge server that had 2000 advanced server on it, immediate networking, but not the server 2003.

What is going on?

Just a guess, because I had a similar problem, but I would look to the router as the problem source.

In my case, I installed the router on my home network and it would only allow conections for about twenty minutes or so, then I would have to restart the router for it to connect again. Solution: went to the store, got my a new one, plugged it in, and no more problems. works just fine.

The mac should not have any problem "talking" to the windows machine. You do it all the time on the internet (most internet servers are either PC running Linux or windows). The protocol you use for your home LAN should be TCP/IP but for games and such there is also IPX where you give each PC an unique adress (255.0.0.10 and add a digit for each PC: 255.0.0.11). But with TCPIP you should have no problems.

Did you install file services for macintosh on the server, if not you can do that and share data with a MAC easily...
Then you just create a MAC sharepoint and all is well....
Done this a few times and it works well

Yeah, all those were installed.
Im having some serious instability problems with the Server 2003 software. I dont really care for Windows, once i made the move to Apple. I ran across a version of Suse Linux yesterday, i think i might just give that a spin on a spare machine, see if it does ok and might just move to Linux if it pans out.

are you trying to share the files using appletalk on the server 2003 machine or by using samba on the mac?

edit: if it's samba you're trying to use, try running this command at the command prompt in windows: browstat status

post what that command tells you.

The last Mac I had was Supermac S900 with system 7. I think appletalk has gone the way of the clones since then and Apple PC's now come with ethernet and RJ45/cat5 cables. Anyway, when u set up Win 2k3 Server, in the share files wizard there is an option for specifically sharing files with a mac. Other things u can do with Win 2k3 is hooking up your printers so everyone can use 1 printer and convert it to a router so it works as a firewall/ gateway to the internet. With some work u can get it to serve documents to a remote site when u phone home ET. However, although I am a big SuSe fan, u better be prepared to burn the midnight oil because even though SuSe is way better than win many times over, it is a bit more complicated. Good Luck!