I found the solution. I found a computer on mine, some guy with a name Ali Sherwood. Seemed a bit odd. I am at a hostel, though.
I turned it off by opening up:
Finder > Finder Preferences > Uncheck the following- "Back to my MAC", "Connected Servers", "Bonjour Computers"
Hope it solves the issue for all!
I'm pretty sure you didn't bump the other computer off. You just hid it. The preference is merely asking if you want to
show other devices. Could be that what you did was sort of like turning up the radio loud enough so you no longer hear the nasty squeak your car is making.
----------
Great thread, please keep participating as new people with this problem are finding this thread via a Google search and jumping in.
I've got two devices both showing up as shared computers on my MacPro.
They both have icons that look like monitors. One is "dell01183" and the other is just "max." I've bumped them off with restarts, but they show back up again fairly quickly. FWIW, I do not own anything that is dell.
I have NO wireless network operating on my computer right now. Normally I do maintain an undiscoverable network using airport (in other words, if you walked into my house my network does not show up as a wifi option, you have to actually know the name of it and type in the name and the password to access it). Right now wifi is turned off and my MacPro is getting internet directly from the phone line / modem. And, wifi on the MacPro is turned off so I can't discover/access any of my neighbor's networks (visible but password protected).
Running 10.7.3
I opened the file sharing preference pane and starting playing around. I originally had the first four sharing preferences ticked (DVD or CD sharing, Screen Sharing, File Sharing and Printer Sharing). Playing around with those, un-clicking them immediately dropped the icons off the sidebar. With file sharing only the laptop had been given access to file sharing but the printer sharing had said "Everyone." Now I've changed "Everyone" to "no access" for the printer. Normally, when I restart the icons would have reappeared by now. They haven't since I unchecked the various boxes, so hopefully that means the other computers are gone for now. Fingers crossed.
Dang. Re-appeared. But in the meantime found
this article; maybe that will do the trick.