The case of the suddenly appearing SMB shares

Macs surprise me sometimes, and my hackintosh even more so. It could be a simple way of doing something that just makes sense, or something you would never believe was that easy because other operating systems make it so hard. Occationally something happens that I wasn’t expecting at all.

I just had one of the later. After much time spent searching for solutions to the missing SMB shares in my Mac’s network, they just appeared.

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Leopard Finder ‘shared’ resources progress

I’ve written several times in the past about the lack of network shares showing up in the Finder sidebar. The issue has been around since I first built my hackintosh using 10.5.2. Nothing would show up, other Macs or Windows (SMB) shares. I’ve tried many suggestions with no luck until this morning. My motherboard, a Gigabyte P35-DS3R using the Realtek 8111B chip.

10.5.3 issues

So 10.5.3 has been here for a couple of weeks, the graphics fix is installed and everything is working as well as it did before. Only the problems aren’t fixed. The failure of the Finder sidebar to display local network shares is still present, and as puzzling and irritating as ever. I had a play around with my setup today, which comprises a Macbook, hackintosh and iPod Touch. The Macbook shows the iPod in the Finder sidebar and can connect to it. The Hackintosh doesn’t show the iPod. I went through the network settings of the Macbook and hackintosh to check they were configured the same, and found the Ethernet setting on the Hackintosh were automatically configured. I switched this to manual like the Macbook, and the iPod, Macbook and my Synology server appeared. The Macbook still can’t see the Synology server. From the Hackintosh I connected to all three network shares, but they disappeared from the Finder sidebar when ejected. And don’t come back until I make a change to the network settings that needs applying.

I could understand if this was a hackintosh problem, but the Macbook is just as flaky. Will 10.5.4 fix this, or do we have to wait for 10.6?

The second issue on the hackintosh is the failure of the computer to prompt for a password after the screensaver has run. The option in system preferences is set, but there’s no password prompt. Again, I could understand if this was a hackintosh problem but there are many reports of Macintosh owners suffering the same issue.

There’s also been a new problem on the Macbook, though this has for now disappeared. Selecting a number of images using quick view resulted in flashing of the window components. This seemed worse when viewing an index sheet, especially full screen. I haven’t suffered graphical problems previously on the Macbook so hopefully this was a fluke.

Macs are easy?

Apple products have had a reputation for ease of use for a long time, but I’m starting to think this has gone seriously awry with Leopard. Up to the release of 10.5 I didn’t have a problem operating Macs on a mixed Mac and Windows network. Leopard brought the promise of automatic discovery and display of network shares in the Finder sidebar. I think I mentioned this before, but it worked for half an hour then disappeared. I’ve spent several hours yesterday and today trying to figure out what is going wrong with this, and got to the point where my Macbook and Hackintosh were both visible to each other. The Macbook could connect to the Hackintosh shares, but not the other way round. Add to this the problems I had when upgrading my Macbook to 10.5.2 where the wireless access points became unconnectable and there’s some serious networking issues with Leopard. Does anyone have a fix for this?