Leopard stops connecting to Windows AFP Server

If your new OS X Leopard balks at making an AFP connection to a Windows 2000/2003 Server running File Services for Macintosh, that’s probably because Leopard no longer will allow sending passwords in clear text to a file server. And not only that, but the option to allow sending the password in clear text has been removed from the Connect to Server dialog box. Isn’t that convenient?

But thanks to an article on macosxhints.com I’ve found the fix: The simplest thing to do is enter two commands at a command/terminal prompt. The more in depth fix is to install the developer tools and edit the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AppleShareClient.plist file. The terminal commands are pretty painless:

defaults write com.apple.AppleShareClient "afp_cleartext_allow" -bool YES
defaults write com.apple.AppleShareClient "afp_cleartext_warn" -bool YES

That’s all you have to do. Now you can connect without a hitch again, so back to work!