Mac Network: Sometimes finds Windows PC, sometimes doesn't.

This is truly odd.
My PC's always find the Mac in the network and I am able to search through it's folders.
The other way round though, sometimes my PC's are found by the Mac and am able to search through the folders perfectly fine.
But majority of the time the Mac will not find/show the PC's in the Network.

Well are you connecting to XP or a flavor of Vista or even the beta 7 ? Are you running some kind of software Firewall on the windows machine? If so did you change the default sharing port "Well known" TCP and UDP ports used by Apple software products?

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"File, Find, Searching "This Mac" or "New Finder Window" not finding files ?

I an iMac 7,1, Mac OS X 10.6.8, Build 10K549,
I have noticed on many occasions recently that when I ma using either ...
File, Find, Searching "This Mac"
or
"New Finder Window"
I am NOT finding the files I am looking for ...
I now they are there, so I go through all my folders, and find the files, or folders I am looking for ...
So why could this be happening, why are they not found in the search ?
Is there a fix or addition ?

As baltwo eventually explained, you have to add the search criteria "System files" to your search, with the option "Include" selected, to find many items Spotlight otherwise excludes from search results. Alternately (& quite ridiculously), if your search is restricted to the parent folder containing the item, you don't need to add this.
For example, if you open /Library in the Finder, enter "Desktop Pictures" in the search box, you won't get it in the results with the default "This Mac" location, but if you click "Library" for the location, you will. (Yes, many users think this is bizarre, "what were they thinking?" behavior.)
What Spotlight considers "system files" is only slightly less bizarre, as you will probably discover once you start using it to broaden searches. For instance, Safari history items & Mail.app messages are not found unless you include system files, but many files like C Header Source files (in System/Library/Frameworks) are found without including system files in the search.
When it was introduced in Tiger, Spotlight was supposed to be a next-generation search engine, capable of accurately guessing what you were looking for (& filtering out what you weren't) with near-sentient intelligence. I think almost anyone who used that version will agree it did not achieve that lofty goal. Apple apparently agreed, or at least listened to the complaints enough to realize it needed rethinking. Unfortunately, what its designers came up with for the Leopard rethink feels like an early beta version, full of hastily implemented, quirky features that never got sorted out before it was released.
We can only hope that we won't have to wait for OS 10.6 for a more mature, less quirky version.

Finder window in internet doesn't show external hard drive. But it's connected and shows up in normal finder window.

Mac OX X 10.6.8. My mac works great with my external hard drive (my passport). When I go to attach a file to facebook, email, or upload anything directly from my external, the finder window that pops up no longer shows my external as being connected. But when I go to finder on the macbook, it shows that my external is there and I can access files no problem. This JUST started happening. What's wrong?

The hard drive won't show up in finder or disk utility, however i can see it in airport utility.
You would not expect it to show up in disk utility .. it does not work on network drives.
Finder may or may not be able to see it.
If the airport utility is showing the drive you have some possibility.
Did you GUID partition the drive .. or is it still MBR.. ie if it was originally formatted for PC it will be MBR and won't work.. so put it on the Mac again and change the GUID partition.. I would also set a smaller partition size.. the internal drive of the TC is partitioned though you cannot see them.. put a first partition less than 1TB and see how it goes.
In finder.. don't forget ML has issues with network drive.. make sure you tick all the extras in finder preferences.. and if the drive won't mount try to do it manually.. go .. connect to server.
AFP://TCname or TCIPaddress.. where you use the actual name or IP.
Also is the power supply for the hub at least 2A preferably more.. so the hub is powered but the disk is not powered??

Logitech S 530: Mac Mini sometimes doesn't recognise the keyboard/mouse

Hi!
I bought the Logitech S 530 for my Mac Mini Intel Core Solo some weeks ago. Sometimes the mac doesn't recognize the keyboard/mouse set and the Logitech Control Center say "No logitech-hardware found". And then all the extra buttons on my mouse and keyboard doesn't work. A simple restart doesn't solve the problem. Often I habe to switch of the computer or even deinstall und reinstall the driver. I wrote to the Logitech Support, and they told me to delete as a root-user some files and then to reinstall the Logitech Control Center. I did it, but the problem wasn't solved. Even if the Logitech Control Center told me, that the hardware wasn't found, the system profiler say:
USB Receiver:
Version: 22.40
Bus-Strom (mA): 500
Geschwindigkeit: Bis zu 1,5 MBit/s
Hersteller: Logitech
Produkt-ID: 0xc50c
Hersteller-ID: 0x046d
Does anyone have a idea about this problem?
Thank you,
Sebastian

Hi!
Has it continued to work alright since your last post
on Sept. 30?
Yes, it works very good (as you can read, because I type on it!)
But I got some news from the APE-Support:
They told me, that this message in the system.log isn't a error message: "You'll see these messages simply to inform that Application Enhancer cannot and does not affect processes owned by root. They are purely informative." Then I asked, why this "information" is written in the system.log I got another mail. They told me, that this message came from a maxtor software, which I installed to use my externel drive. and: "The maxtor software doesn't use APE at all. APE is saying it cannot affect the software in any manner, in case you were expecting it to work with the maxtor software. I'm not sure if that maxtor software even works. If you don't use the button on your maxtor drive, you can just disable the maxtor software completely."
So, I seems that there is a problem between this logitech driver with APE and the Maxtor-Stuff. But, Ashleyn, do you use the maxtor software too?

HT4796 Mac can't find Window XP computer

The Migration Assistant is open on a Windows XP computer and "waiting for your Mac to connect", and the Mac is searching but they can't find each other. What should I do to help them? Both are on the same ethernet.

Thank you! That information was definitely helpful.
I haven't tried since my post to get our printer to work (ended up sending my doc to Staples, in the interest of time, and haven't had to print anything since).
Anyway, this morning I replaced our ink and tried printing something. It still wasn't working (but this time, all it said was the printer wasn't connected). I reconnected the printer to the network, then turned it off, restarted our computer, and once the computer was back up, I turned the printer back on.
The printer appeared in our network, again, and my printing job was successful. Yay! I LOVE when technology works. =)

CS6/Mac Air - Cannot find windows that I reduced using top left buttons.

When I click the middle yellow button(with minus bar inside) top left corner of an open window/canvas it reduces the file and you see it close and swoop doen into the Photoshop icon on the bottom toolbar. How do I find those windows to reopen/expand back to my Photoshop window? Can't find them anywhere. I know they are still active as I did not click the red close button, only the reduce size button.

Thank you, John.
I had completely forgotten about the Dock option to minimize windows into the icon of their own applications.
I now remember seeing that option when it appeared for the first time and thinking "why would I want to do a thing like that?"
(I'll probably forget about this again, eventually. …unless I start using it right away.)

Finder window doesn't refresh

Dear all,
When I login into a Windows Server 2003, Mac OS X (and for that matter Mac OS 9) Finder windows do not refresh as fast as we would like them to. It takes me about 10 minutes or more. I have to close out of, or collapse if in List view, the window, and reopen it to force a redraw.
Please help.
Thanks
Mac Mini 1,4 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Hi everyone:
I'm having similar problems like this too. Using my iMac running OS X 10.4.6 and accessing a shared folder located on my Win XP PC.
Any ideas/suggestion anyone would be helpful..!
Intel iMac Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Finder window opens with inconsistent view

Since I upgraded to Yosemite, Finder windows open with inconsistent size, position and view. After a power on a Finder window generally opens as a small, centrally-located window in Icon view even though preferences is set to always open in column view; sometimes the small window is in column view. Rarely, the first new window opens in the same size, position and view as the last one was before power off then the next one - opened using Command-N - opens as a small, central window in Icon view. In all previous versions of Mac OS, new Finder windows opened in the same size, position and view as the window I closed last on screen, even after a power off/on. Once I reset the window size, position and view to my preference, new windows generally open correctly.
Is there some setting I can change so new windows always retain the size, position and view as the last one closed?

Do a backup.
Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library. Then go to Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist. Move the .plist to your desktop.
Re-launch Finder by restarting the computer and test. If it works okay, delete the plist from the desktop.
If the same, return the .plist to where you got it from, overwriting the newer one.
Thanks to leonie for some information contained in this.

Finder window "refresh" issue

Since upgrading to Mac OS X (10.4.10) on my work mac yesterday, my finder window seems to have a mind of its own.
The finder window opens at start up (which is okay) but if I minimize it or close it, it will reappear in one and a half minutes, popping up in front of whatever document I'm using. When it reappears it seems as though the contents of the desktop and the finder window are being automatically "refreshed" as the icons disappear for a split second. If I leave the finder window open on the desktop, it still refreshes every one and a half minutes--yes, I've timed it!
I've downloaded and installed the latest updates and tried to see if I could change preferences to fix the issue, but with no success.
Any ideas about how to make the finder window stay put? It's a major pain to try and work when the finder keeps kicking me out of my document every 90 seconds
Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

What is happening is that the Finder is crashing, after it crashes it returns to the state it was last in, thus the reappearance of the open window where it was when you started. If you just upgraded my first guess would be some startup item that is not compatible with the system upgrade. Try holding the Shift key when you startup--I can never remember how long you need to hold it, so always keep it down until I see the splash screen with the notice at the top it is in Safe Mode. This will run a number of disk repair, cache cleaning routines, and also disable all third party startup items, as well as Apple's own startup items that are not necessary for the computer to run. Safe boot takes longer to get up and going than normal boot, so be patient. If the Finder does not crash in Safe Mode, restart normally. If the crashes resume you are going to have to disable all startup items, then add them back one at time to determine the culprit. If the Finder continues to crash, even in Safe Mode, then you can try creating a new user, log out of your regular account and in to the new user. If the new user is fine, then the problem is some file in the regular account that is causing the crashes.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Auto-scrolling of list view in Finder windows sometimes doesn't work

I've noticed a minor bug in 10.4 that doesn't seem to show up in 10.3.9, and I thought I'd comment on it here because it's mildly annoying, and I'm not sure that anyone at Apple is aware of the issue.
My Pictures folder is pretty large -- I have over 6,000 items in it, some of which are themselves folders. I've got this folder set to list view. My typical usage pattern is to open a Finder window for my Pictures folder, start typing the first few characters of a file name, and then search from there. In 10.4.3 and later (up to and including 10.4.6 as of this writing), if the file in question is outside the viewport of the Finder window, the thumb on the scrollbar will jump to the correct location, but the actual viewport won't scroll to match; therefore, the file that gets highlighted isn't visible.
The work-around is to manually scroll the contents of the window so that I'm "closer" to the file I'm looking for; alternately, I can type characters to get the ball rolling, and then hit the up or down arrow key a couple times (once won't do the trick) which will force the viewport to jump to the correct scroll location. Using this second method, I then have to move the selection back to the file, which is annoying since it's forcing me to use extra keystrokes.
Interestingly enough, if I am careful and click on the scrollbar thumb without moving it too much (after typing the first few characters of the filename I'm looking for), the viewport will usually "snap to" the appropriate position. This suggests that the logic to auto-scroll the contents of a Finder window got subtly broken between Panther and Tiger. It just seems weird to me that the scrollbar thumb would jump without the viewport following suit automatically.
This wasn't a problem in 10.3.9. I realize that we're being encouraged to use Spotlight and other search features, but since my pictures directory is already an alphabetic list view of files, why should I be forced to do a Spotlight search when I know what it is I'm after?
Dual 2.0 GHz G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

I've been having the same problem (though I haven't looked at the console yet to verify the same exact error).
There doesn't seem to be a situation that I can identify to cause the problem (i.e. waking from sleep mode), so it's difficult to reproduce consistently. The error seems to happen randomly. Last night I was getting the error every time I sent a single message. So I'd create and send a message, and then the next message I'd try to create or reply to, I couldn't. I'd have to quit Mail and start it again to gain functionality.
When I do have the problem where the compose window isn't created when replying, I also can not start a new message, note, or forward a message. Basically, no new windows can pop up besides the windows that are already there in Mail. When I quit mail, every window I tried to create by replying, making a new message, or forwarding, appears in the draft folder, just before the program closes. Then, the next time I open Mail all the windows appear that I tried to create, with no text in them. Very strange. Looks like this poster has a similar problem.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1197152&tstart=1020
I'm curious if this is a bug, or something our machines just can't handle? I see that we all have very similarly spec'd PowerBooks.

My Macbook sometimes doesn't connect to my Wireless N network

I had my topcase replaced by apple a few weeks ago. Since then I've noticed my macbook SOMETIMES doesn't connect to my wireless N network (from my AEBS running on 5.8ghz frequency).
It's strange because most of the time it finds the network fine. But sometimes when i open the macbook up (awakes from sleep) it doesn't see the network (it's not available from the list of available networks). If i try to connect manually to the network when this happens i get a "connection timeout" message. If i turn off my airport connection off and then on with the macbook (thru the menu bar) it sometimes finds the N network. Sometimes that doesn't work, and i have to put the macbook to sleep and hope it finds the network when it awakes. Sometimes that solves the problem, but i may have to try it 3 or 4 times.
If i switch my AEBS to a mixed signal (supporting G) i don't have these problems, but i shouldn't have to do that, and i'm sacrificing wireless speed if i do that. I have a stable connection when it DOES find the network (it won't drop out and will be at full strength) but as soon as i put it to sleep i run the risk it may not find the network when it awakes.
As i said before i didn't notice this problem before I sent in the macbook to have the topcase repaired - is it possible the airport card was damaged? I was only running a N wireless network a week prior to submitting the macbook for repair, so i'm not positive that's it either.

There's a reason why some are less than energetic in answering your question: the "pinwheel of death" could mean a lot of things. To start off, you will need to use various utilities to coax your MBP into functionality:
1. Perform a Permisions Repair, and also Repair your disk on Disk Utilities. If this doesn't work, proceed to the next step.
2. Using a free utility like Onyx, clean your caches.
3. Using the free Kext Wizard, make sure your files are consistent and accurate.
4. Use OpenDNS by connecting to this link:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2478039?start=0&tstart=0
OpenDNS is a simple way of making your online experience faster and easier.
If these steps were successful, take the time to post here; others will profit from your experience. If you still don't have the answer, post...and we'll find the solution!

Reopen All Windows from Last Session Sometimes Doesn't

I guess the title sums it up. Sometimes when I startup my iMac in the morning, after having shutdown the evening before, and open Safari and choose "reopen all windows from last session" I may only get one window instead of the three or four I might have had open.
I do use tabs so I know I could open them all in one window but sometimes I end up with other windows open anyway, each with multiple tabs. I know I could just let my iMac sleep and leave Safari open but sometimes I end up shutting down.
Anyway, does it have something to do with the way Safari was last closed? Does it matter if I close each window one by one? Should I simply quit Safari and let all the windows close themselves? How exactly is "last session" defined? I'm probably overlooking something fairly basic but it is a bit confusing.
Regards,
Steve M.
Message was edited by: Steve M.

HI Steve,
If you have multiple Windows open, Safari should reopen those when you relaunch Safari.
Open a Finder window select your Home Folder in the Sidebar on the left. Then open the Library folder, then the Caches folder, then the com.apple.Safari folder. Move the cache.db file from the com.apple.Safari folder to the Trash. Relaunch Safari.
If that didn't help, try troubleshooting the Safari .plist file. Quit Safari if it's open. Open a Finder window. Select your Home Folder in the Sidebar on the left. It has a small house icon. Then open the Library folder then the Preferences folder.
Move the com.apple.Safari.plist file from the Preferences folder to the Desktop. Now launch Safari. If Safari "reopens all windows from last session", move that .plist file to the Trash.
If that didn't help, Quit Safari. In a Finder window select your Home folder in the Sidebar again. Open the Library folder then the Safari folder. Move the LastSession.plist file to the Trash.
Thank you for the star.
Carolyn

The answer helped me.But still, what are the settings that I have to change for the behavior of the mouse pointer towards finder? Also the mouse pointer sometimes doesn't accept my command and start clicking itself.what is the problem and how to fix it?

The answer helped me.But still, what are the settings that I have to change for the behavior of the mouse pointer towards finder? Also the mouse pointer sometimes doesn't accept my command and start clicking itself.what is the problem and how to fix it?

If the mouse clicks something on its own then it looks like you have a hardware problem with the trackpad or possibly the battery that is right underneath the trackpad.
I have read that the battery can swell and that would put pressure on the trackpad.

Finally got round to buying an iPhone 4, really excellent to start with. The sharing of music from my Mac Mini was excellent. ios6 update has ruined all that! The artist view miss's out most of my music and the sharing sometimes doesn't work at all!

Finally got round to buying an iPhone 4, really excellent to start with. The sharing of music from my Mac Mini was excellent. ios6 update has ruined all that! The artist view miss's out most of my music and the sharing sometimes doesn't work at all!
How do I get this feature working again? I am reluctant to move to iTunes 10.7 because I don't trust Apple at the moment.

My suggestion:
1) Always using MAC AIR with the power plug in.
2)Don' let the power level of battory fall under 30% percentage.
3)If the MAC can't be recharged now, just let it be with power plugged, WAIT...

When I connect an external hard drive to macbook pro it is very slow to appear on the desktop and Finder window, sometimes 20 mins or more, even with auto backup switched off . any clues?

when I connect an external hard drive to macbook pro it is very slow to appear on the desktop and Finder window, sometimes 20 mins or more, even with auto backup switched off . any clues?

Hi robfromkinglake west,
Try and isolate the issue. Check if it's only with this drive.
Check the drive with Disk Utility
Using Disk Utility to verify or repair disks
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1782
I've never seen a drive take 20 minutes to mount.
Nubz

Mac Network: Sometimes finds Windows PC, sometimes doesn't.

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