I was running FM 5 on my Windows XP machine as the host and connected to it from my Mac OS X FM 7 as a guest, no problem.

Now I want to switch which is guest and which machine is host, but I can't get the Mac to show up in Hosts when trying to connect from the PC. I am already networked to the Mac, and can even browse to the FM files on my Mac, but get the message that the PC can't read those disks. All firewalls are off and all of the Win/Mac connection instructions have been followed. The two machines are connected via a router, and typing in the 192.168.1.1 address of the Mac into "specify host" doesn't work. How strange that I am networked successfully yet can't get the Mac's FM files to show up in hosts. It worked the other way around just fine. Any ideas what I am missing? Thanks! PS: I read "File Is Single User Or The Host Could Not Be Found" and all I could get from that is that maybe port 5003 needs to be opened up? I am not sure if this applies to me or how to do it.

Check network permissions on the file.

I did that already, and tried opening that port, and tried with Windows sharing on and off, but no joy. No error message comes up saying the host can't be found or anything - the box of choices of hosts just remains empty after the wavy cursor finishes doing its thing.

"I was running FM 5 on my Windows XP machine as the host and connected to it from my Mac OS X FM 7 as a guest, no problem."

Hang on... FMP 5 and FMP 7 are not compatible. You CANNOT be using FMP 7 to connect into a FMP 5 database.

Oh, you know what? I guess they are downward compatible, but not the other way around. They are compatible if the 5 is the host and 7 connects to it, because I have been doing that for some time. When I got a new computer and a new Filemaker, I just hooked it up to the old one without a problem.

Nope, not compatible at all.

I don't know what's happening, but it's not a client running FMP 7 connecting to a FMS 5 host.

At this stage I'd be directing my energy into working out what's *really* going on.