Well, you would consider this to be very difficult task to accomplish but it wasn’t. It was confusing at first but once you know what you got to do, its really simple.
Samba is the application you need for this purpose. To install samba type:
sudo apt-get install samba4
in terminal and enter your password to download and install samba. Installation could also be done using Synaptic Package Manager.
Windows Vista had changed the way it authenticated users. It was different from windows xp. Samba wasn’t able to able to share files with windows vista due to this reason but it has been solved since Samba3.
Okay, getting back to the topic..
You also need smbclient to surf the windows shared files on the network. Install that by typing the following command in terminal:
sudo apt-get install smbclient
This will install the smbclient. To browse the shared folder, you can just go to Places->Network->Windows Network and find all the shared computers there. If you don’t see the shares there, don’t worry. I wasn’t able to see as well, so I typed smb://192.168.1.2/ in the address bar of any file explorer, where 192.168.1.2 is the ip address of the windows vista computer.
To share files from ubuntu to windows, just right click on a folder, then click on properties. Click on share and select the ‘Share this folder’ option. It may ask you to install some services. Click on yes to install them. After installation, you’ll be able to browse the folder on your windows vista like a normal windows computer.
The guide may have some errors. Pardon me if thats the case. Remember, I am just a newbie. This did work for me, though.
Cheers!