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Cannot open Network from Go menu

EricNau

EricNau

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Apr 27, 2005
10,742
302
San Francisco, CA
On my MacBook, if I go select 'Network' from the Go menu in Finder, nothing happens. Selecting the network icon from within Finder does not work either.

I'm running OS 10.4.7. I tried repairing permission and restarting, neither worked.

I'm out of ideas.

Thanks for the help. :)
 
When you say "nothing happens" when you select the Network icon, define nothing--do you get a blank window, do you get a window that contains nothing but "Library" and "Servers", or does it refuse to even select?

Also, what kind of a network are we talking about here? That is, what do you *expect* to see there?
 
When I say nothing, I literally mean nothing. I can click it or select it all I want but nothing ever happens. I think the first time I tried to open it (when this problem first happened) it might have appeared for a split second but it then disappeared.

I'm trying to access my files on another computer (through personal file sharing).
 
Is the other computer a Mac or Windows PC?
do you have the ip address of the other computer?
can you ping it?
please give as much info as you can about the network.
 
RndmAxess said:
Do you have Personal File Sharing enabled in system prefs?

If not I'm fairly certain what your describing is what will happen.
Click to expand...
Yes, on both computers. ...but I should be able to open Network even without that enabled.

cahillj said:
Is the other computer a Mac or Windows PC?
do you have the ip address of the other computer?
can you ping it?
please give as much info as you can about the network.
Click to expand...
Both are Macs (one iMac G5, one MacBook). I'm connected to a WLAN via Airport and Airport Express.

I don't think the problem lies within a network setting or connection. To test this, I turned off my Airport (therefore disconnecting myself from the network), and I could still not open the Network window.
 
Can you connect to the MacBook from the iMac and push the files from the iMac?
If you can this achieves two things. It solves your file transfer problem (in the short term :) ) and it shows that the network is working on the MacBook.
It might also point to a need to archive and reinstall :(
 
The "push" method is one thing to try, but do this first:

1) Go to the Sharing tab of the comptuer you're trying to connect to and see what it gives for the "local subnet" address; it will look something like "EricNaus-Computer.local". Remember to look at the text below the box where you enter the Computer Name--it will probably be slightly different.

2) On the computer giving you the trouble, select "Connect to Server" from the "Go" menu. You should get a small dialogue box.

3) Type the address from step one ("EricNaus-Computer.local" or whatever) into that box, exactly as it appears on the other computer. Don't forget the .local, and remember that there's no punctuation after local

4) Click "Conenct". If the network is ok and everything is running properly, you'll get a login dialogue box. If that happsens, I have no idea what's up with the Network icon, but for the most part everything is fine.

If you get an error, there's either something amiss with your network, you typed in the computer's address wrong, or there's something wrong with the networking subsystem on that computer (which there indeed may be, given the misbehavior of the "Network" icon).
 
cahillj said:
It might also point to a need to archive and reinstall :(
Click to expand...
That's what I was afraid of :(

Makosuke said:
The "push" method is one thing to try, but do this first:

1) Go to the Sharing tab of the comptuer you're trying to connect to and see what it gives for the "local subnet" address; it will look something like "EricNaus-Computer.local". Remember to look at the text below the box where you enter the Computer Name--it will probably be slightly different.

2) On the computer giving you the trouble, select "Connect to Server" from the "Go" menu. You should get a small dialogue box.

3) Type the address from step one ("EricNaus-Computer.local" or whatever) into that box, exactly as it appears on the other computer. Don't forget the .local, and remember that there's no punctuation after local

4) Click "Conenct". If the network is ok and everything is running properly, you'll get a login dialogue box. If that happsens, I have no idea what's up with the Network icon, but for the most part everything is fine.

If you get an error, there's either something amiss with your network, you typed in the computer's address wrong, or there's something wrong with the networking subsystem on that computer (which there indeed may be, given the misbehavior of the "Network" icon).
Click to expand...
That worked perfectly.
 
EricNau said:
That worked perfectly.
Click to expand...
Well, then the networking on the box is fine, the Finder is just misbehaving. I have no worthwhile suggestions, but you might try creating a new account just to see if that's ok. If the new account works as expected, some setting got munged in your user account.

If it doesn't, since the network itself is working properly, I can only think that maybe the Bonjour service isn't running correctly or something, but I don't know nearly enough about this area to say anything meaningful.
 
Makosuke said:
Well, then the networking on the box is fine, the Finder is just misbehaving. I have no worthwhile suggestions, but you might try creating a new account just to see if that's ok. If the new account works as expected, some setting got munged in your user account.
Click to expand...
Well, believe it or not, that actually fixed my problem. :)

I created another user account, in which the Network window appeared perfectly fine, I switched back to my original account (and deleted the test account) and tried it one more time... and it worked!

Thanks :D
 
Glad that did it. No idea why it would, but maybe a cache got cleared or somesuch in the process.

I hate mystery fixes since I like to know what I did for future reference, but All's well that ends well, I'd say.
 
Bug?

Sounds like a bug. This happened on a friend's G4 laptop. Creating the new user, going to the network under that user, and going back to the main user worked. I deleted the temp user and it worked.

Thanks for the tip!

:)
 
It's back! ...And this time it's affecting both of my computers. Maybe I got a virus. :rolleyes: Seriously, at least Windows has that excuse. :mad:


I have found a workaround though...
While selecting Network from the Go menu or double clicking 'Network' from the Finder window will not work, selecting 'Network' from the sidebar does.

Also, if you are having this problem, chances are you will not be able to click and drag Network into the sidebar if it isn't already there. To do this you must select Preferences in the finder menu and check 'Network' under the 'Sidebar' tab.

Hopefully this will be fixed in 10.4.8 :)
 
Trust me, It's not a virus. I've seen this issue on a 10.3 and 10.4 clean OS installs on an Ibook G3, G4 and MacBook. (MacBook only running 10.4 of course) I've also seen it on multiple networks, running multiple brands of wireless routers.

The symptoms are the window flashes for a split second, but never opens the very first time you select Go->Network. After that, it does nothing.

I've never seen it on a desktop computer. I initially thought it was wireless only, but I've seen it on a wired laptop too. I have no magic bullet for this, nor haveI ever seen an answer to this question that satisfied me. And, I never have seen it acknowledged by anyone at Apple.

The only consistent work around I know of is to connect to server via Cmd-K. If you connect to a server via this, your network will come back to life until the next restart. Darn frustrating since I can never remember my hosts or IP numbers. I want my nice set of icons, darn it!

So, any other data points out there? ANyone see this on a desktop machine? Only on wireless?
 
not just 10.4

Trust me, It's not a virus. I've seen this issue on a 10.3 and 10.4 clean OS installs on an Ibook G3, G4 and MacBook. (MacBook only running 10.4 of course) I've also seen it on multiple networks, running multiple brands of wireless routers.

The symptoms are the window flashes for a split second, but never opens the very first time you select Go->Network. After that, it does nothing.

I've never seen it on a desktop computer. I initially thought it was wireless only, but I've seen it on a wired laptop too. I have no magic bullet for this, nor haveI ever seen an answer to this question that satisfied me. And, I never have seen it acknowledged by anyone at Apple.

The only consistent work around I know of is to connect to server via Cmd-K. If you connect to a server via this, your network will come back to life until the next restart. Darn frustrating since I can never remember my hosts or IP numbers. I want my nice set of icons darn it!

So, any other data points out there?
 
Fix for the go -> network issue

when you go to the menu under go and you select network nothing happens....
well the fix is as follows:
Go to your Hard Drive -> Users -> UserName -> Library -> Preferences -> com.apple.finder.plist
Take the com.apple.finder.plist file and place it in the trash.
Restart your computer and your problem should go away.
 
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