AFP Connection Status and various OS X applications locking up
I love my new MacBook Pro, but when I have it detached from my home network I often get application lock ups or long pauses while using it offline. I found a repeatable pattern: when selecting File–>Open from many (most) applications, often for the first time, the MBP would pause and then display a dialog stating AFP Connection Status … Looking up “<hostname>.” Clicking on the solo “Cancel” button tends to solve the problem, but the delay is hugely annoying.
It turns out the problem is due to an alias from my offline MBP to a folder on one of my networked Macs; specifically, the Pictures folder is aliased to one computer on my network that holds my pictures so I can access them from all machines. As soon as I remove or rename the alias (to something like Pictures2) I no longer receive the AFP Connection Status window. As soon as I rename it back to Pictures, the AFP Connection Status dialog appears.
December 15th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
I’m also suffering this problem and wondered if you have a fix ?
December 16th, 2006 at 8:25 am
My problem was due to it looking for the Pictures folder, which was located on a shared drive. I relocated the Pictures folder to the internal drive of the Mac and that solved the problem. It seems to me the Mac is looking for a directory mounted from another server that it doesn’t have access to (in my case another Mac). I’ve also had problems with empty passwords and the Mac displaying an authentication dialog, even if I had previously saved it in my keychain, if that is of any help.
January 30th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
I had the same problem. The PhotoShop app was on the desktop, put it back in the Applications folder. Everything fine now.
What happened was I thought I had made an alias of the icon and by option-dragging it to the desktop so that I could drop files directly onto it to open them. Turns out I what I did was drag the actual app onto the desktop.
I don’t know why this would do what it did, but it did.
April 19th, 2007 at 9:29 am
I deleted aliases to networked drives in /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/.
May 22nd, 2007 at 4:44 am
I was getting the same message. The AFP Connection Status was not only popping up every 3-4 seconds, my Finder was doing the “I’m busy thinking” spinning wheel thing so long it was not responding. Usually a simple relaunch and restart works via the click-holding the Finder icon on the dock or via the Force Quit Applications window (Apple-command key+Option+Esc). However upon restart the same turning wheel. Usually one program is tweaking out I can still use others. So did a google search and found several people receiving the same error. There was some resonable advice, but only one out of 4 or 5 solving their issue. Then I read about pros being stumped and thought Uh Oh! I could be in for a long night. I tried saving what I read to reference later and then the thinking wheel consumed Safari. Force Quit Safari > Press Power button for a sec…Do I want to restart? YES > Finder is still thinking…Relaunch Finder again and finally it restarts. I try to do everything to avoid hard forced restarts. I keep my dock loaded with apps and files and folders. One utility I have learned to appreciate is Activity Monitor (located in Applications > Utility folder). I opened this up and went down the list of open programs. Anything not responding shows up in red. There it is Finder (not responding) with the AFP Client (not responding) directly underneath it. I scroll down some more and found the culprit (for my situation). Normally I run everything on an external via my laptop or desktop. Since I’ve been house sitting, I hooked up my external to my friends mac since they have a large screen. Then I wirelessly networked them together via the Airport wirless router and read my mail on my laptop and ran processes, while I ran other processes and surfer the net on the desktop. This worked fine until I was finished and disconnected everything. My comp kept looking for the server. I turned off apple share, disabled the airport connect on the laptop, etc. In the Activity Monitor I save the Microsoft Daemon and just below, it’s sub program AFP Client (not responding)! I quit them plugged my external back into my laptop and was on to my next problem solve…sleep. Good luck! I hope this helps!