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OSX Leopard - Screen Sharing Problems

J

jamesd007

macrumors newbie
Original poster
My girlfriend and I are both running leopard and have used screen sharing in our dorms on campus many times. We are now back at our respective homes for the summer and we cant seem to get the screen sharing to work. My father's mac which is connected to the same wireless network as I am, in my house, connects to my screen sharing with no problem. When I try to connect to my grilfriends computer however we get the following message:

'Failed to start screen sharing: Because screen sharing could not be established."

Any suggestions how to fix this?

ps - I cannot video chat with her on iChat too (but i can on Skype)
 
jamesd007 said:
My girlfriend and I are both running leopard and have used screen sharing in our dorms on campus many times. We are now back at our respective homes for the summer and we cant seem to get the screen sharing to work. My father's mac which is connected to the same wireless network as I am, in my house, connects to my screen sharing with no problem. When I try to connect to my grilfriends computer however we get the following message:

'Failed to start screen sharing: Because screen sharing could not be established."

Any suggestions how to fix this?

ps - I cannot video chat with her on iChat too (but i can on Skype)
Click to expand...

Same. Exact. Problem. I can video chat and screenshare with almost everyone, and I can even screenshare with my girlfriend when she's not at her house. Any time she or anyone else is at her house, on her internet connection, it doesn't work. There's something wrong with her router. I am about to just buy her a new router.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

It may be a bandwidth issue. According to Apple, you must have at least 300 kbps up and down to use screen sharing. Check what your upload speed is from both ISPs. The speed posted is usually just the max download speed. Most ISPs short quite a bit on the upload speed.
 
It could also be a router issue. I believe both Video chat and Screen sharing use a router feature called uPnP (Universal Plug and play) to open ports when they are needed. FOr Apple routers this is not an issue. For non-apple routers, I believe you need to make sure you have uPnP is turned on or enabled.

See if you can find anything like this in the router at both ends, and then try turning it on.

You know your computers are setup correctly because it works at other locations.

Have you tried screen sharing through iChat also? That may also be worth a try, but I suspect it uses the same mechanism...
 
ive only tried screen sharing through ichat. dint know there was another way to do it.

about these ports and router stuff....how do i check it? its a non-apple router...
 
jamesd007 said:
ive only tried screen sharing through ichat. dint know there was another way to do it.

about these ports and router stuff....how do i check it? its a non-apple router...
Click to expand...

The other way to do screen sharing requires that the computer shows up in the "Shared" section of your finder windows, so that will probably only work on your local network.

In order to get into your router settings, there is usually a web interface. Enter your router's IP address in Safari and you should get prompted for username and password, or something to access the settings. if you don't know your router's IP address, look at your network settings - it will be listed under the advanced settings, on the TCP/IP tab. Normally it will be something like 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1, but it can also be other values.

The setup screens are different for each router manufacturer, and router model. If you can get us the Manufacturer and Model number, we can help you find the settings. You are going to need to know the password though, unless it still has the factory default.

Remember that the problem could be on either end of your connection also. Have you tried having your friend start the chat?
 
aross99 said:
The other way to do screen sharing requires that the computer shows up in the "Shared" section of your finder windows, so that will probably only work on your local network.
Click to expand...

Only on your LAN unless you use BackToMyMac, which I've tried and I see my girlfriend's Mac in my Finder, but it fails to connect even for filesharing, and screen sharing doesn't work either.
 
Well, I am using a US Robotics 9106 and my girlfriend has a Linksys WRT54GS Version 6.

I changed the AIM port on my iChat to 443 when i left the US. It din't work here till i did that.
 
jamesd007 said:
Well, I am using a US Robotics 9106 and my girlfriend has a Linksys WRT54GS Version 6.

I changed the AIM port on my iChat to 443 when i left the US. It din't work here till i did that.
Click to expand...

Assuming you are talking about the port setting under accounts on the Server settings tab - My port is set to 5190 and use SSL is not checked, which I think are the defaults. You might try those settings...

Port 443 is normally used for for SSL. I am in the US, but I don't know why it would matter if you were in the US or not.
 
You don't have internet connection sharing turned on on either of those machines, do you?

We found out that that was killing our ability to control my Mother-in-Law's computer from here.
 
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