MacOS – OS X attempting to connect to non-existent server

findermacos

My wife's Mac is acting up and I've been trying to sort it out for a while with no success.

Anytime she opens a new Finder window, tries to upload an image to Facebook, exports an image from Lightroom, or does any other file related task. The system hangs for 1 to 5 minutes before popping up an error that says "There was a problem connecting to the server "Steph's Mac". Everything then proceeds to work normally.

error message

Here's the thing. The computer that is having the problem is called "Steph's Mac". There is no other computer with that name. There never was a server called "Steph's Mac"

Here is what I've tried:

  • Sharing settings: disabling SMB
  • Disabling file sharing completely
  • Finder / Connect to server: clear recent servers…
  • Changed computer name to "Studio Mac" Error window still reads "Steph's Mac"
  • Signed out of iCloud account
  • Sys Prefs / Accounts:
    • Login Items – removed all of them
    • Login Options / Join… / Open Directory Utility… searched mounts. there was none
  • disabled Bluetooth
  • Ran First Aid from Disk Utility on all the drives.

Edit: Added more checks

  • cleared ~/Library/LaunchAgents
  • cleared /Library/LaunchAgents LaunchDaemons & StartupItems
  • cleared ~/Library/Preferences
  • Disabled Dropbox Finder integration
  • Turned Adobe Creative Cloud Sync off

End Edit

I figure somewhere deep in the preferences it's finding something that's telling it to connect to a server. But I can't figure out were.

Best Answer

You may be able to hunt down the problem by creating a second admin user.

If the problem vanishes logging in as the second (admin) user, it's probably related to an item/setting in the realm of the first user.

If the problem persists it's probably related to a system-wide setting/start-up item (e.g. a launch daemon/agent).

In the first case you can disable several items (e.g. user related Login Items/StartupItems/LaunchAgents) and check if the problem persists.

A second source of error may be an (old) self-referential link of a local share to the local folder of a cloud storage, file synchronization or personal cloud service (e.g. in Dropbox, iCloud or even some Adobe Online service).

In the second case check the folders /Library/LaunchAgents, /Library/LaunchDaemons or /Library/StartupItems for suspicious plists/files.

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