On my local network here at home, my OS X 10.5 Macintosh can see the Shared folder on my older Windows XP laptop. But it can’t see anything on the new Windows 7 computer. Nor can the Win7 computer see the Mac.
All I want to do is shuffle a few files back and forth. That should be easy, right?
In scouring the Web, I’ve looked at posts in several different forums that purport to address this issue. But none of them has steps that work for me. All of the instructions I’m seeing either make assumptions about what I’ll see in Windows (example: “open Control Panel and switch to classic view” … dude, I don’t have a button for that in the Win7 control panel), or dive straight into networking protocols at a deep level without explaining the intermediate steps (“use afp://192.168.5.xxx” … dude, where would I use that?).
The real problem is that Microsoft and Apple don’t like one another. (Good thing I don’t have a Linux machine. I’m sure they both hate Linux.) So each of them is going to pretend it’s the other company’s fault. A post on one of the Microsoft forums did indeed say, “You need to contact Apple about that.”
Sure, I can throw the files onto a USB flash drive and use the sneakernet. For now, that’s the only solution I have. But I can’t help thinking it’s odd that nobody at either Microsoft or Apple is willing to step up to the plate and work this out.
Jim Aikin's Oblong Blob 
On the Windows 7 side, right-click a folder and choose Properties. Go to the Sharing tab. Click the Share button, then select a user to share it with – presumably the account you log in with.
This account must have a password or else it will be denied network access. Also you will need to know the username for this user. You can check C:\Users to confirm.
By default, the share will be created with the same name as the folder. You can go to Advanced Sharing under the Sharing tab to change the share name.
On the Mac, click the desktop to bring up the Finder menu bar. Click Go, then choose “Connect to Server.” Enter:
cifs://win7pc/sharename
You will be prompted for credentials. Enter the username from above and the password.
That should be all there is to it. Oh, but if you don’t have at least Windows 7 Home Premium, the file sharing feature may be incomplete and not allow you to share folders in a way that other operating systems can use.
Thanks, Ben! I had to wrangle with your instructions for about five minutes to figure out what to put in the URL, and I’m still not sure I understand completely how it all works. I had some folders showing up in Finder that I didn’t want to share, but I got those turned off in Windows. There seem to be two routes to get to my shared folder, only one of which works … and now the Disconnect button isn’t working.
But I’ve been able to swap files back and forth, and that’s the main thing.
–JA