Networking Problems With Panther?

I have to forcibly reboot my laptop daily.

[dragonlady7]

Network file sharing on Panther is a royal pain in the patoot.
I have been trying for four days now to network my laptop to the PC network at work. I managed this with no trouble before Panther. But now... It hangs the computer fatally every time I try. It's getting maddening.
It's not the same thing each time. No, each time I think I've determined what the problem was, so the next time I try, I make sure I've taken care of that factor.
No.
Today I got as far as actually connecting to the PC, and then I clicked on one of the shared folders and got Spinning Rainbow Wheel Of Doom for 10 minutes. My attempts to shut it down via all regular ways were simply ignored-- I entered administrator password to log out other users on the computer, etc., and then nothing happened-- so finally I had to do the trick where you hold down the power button until your finger falls asleep.

I'm not amused.

Panther rocks, yes, but not so hard that I don't mind not being able to transfer files back and forth between computers.

It has trouble connecting to the Mac network at home, as well. Settings just change themselves. Apple File Sharing turns itself off at will. The Airport turns itself off at will. And you have to manually go turn them back on.

I'd kinda hoped, to be honest, that they'd fix the bug where the computer goes down if it's connected to a server and that server is taken offline. Because my boyfriend has a nasty habit of putting his powerbook to sleep every time he stands up, and sometimes I'm connected to the Powerbook and working on something, and that means I lose what I'm working on, because my whole computer goes down and has to be restarted. (Yes. I've learned to save constantly. The hard way.)
But no, it's gotten worse, because now it gives you a dialogue box offering to disconnect you from the server that went down, and you click "yes" and the computer hangs. So you waste ten minutes thinking it's going to be nice to you.

Anybody got any tips, tricks, advice, crowbars? I mean... it's such a great operating system to actually *use*-- this is the Mac OS that's finally got me annoyed to have to use my PC at work. (I'm bi-platform. It never really bothered me before. But I keep hitting f11 and wondering why nothing happens, and I keep clicking on the left-hand upper corner of my windows and being confused.)
But the networking... How could it actually become *worse*? I've never had an OS X box crash so much in my life!

Sigh.
Had to get that off my chest. Insight, anyone?

[Brad]

I would definately post about this at Apple Support, the more people they know are having problems the faster they will come out with an update to fix it.

[dragonlady7]

Yeah...
I've been participating in a pretty active thread over there about how you can't share iPhoto libraries among computers, and I was all hopeful they'd've addressed that this release, but... they didn't touch iPhoto. :( So...
My faith in Apple Support is pretty low.
I will make a post there.
I did eventually make it work-- here's a hint to anyone with this problem: DO NOT use the nice graphical folders. Don't go to the Network folder in Finder and click your way through that way. It just... doesn't work. (Occasionally it does. But usually, it just hangs.) You have to use Finder > Go > Connect To Server, and you'd better have made sure that you'd manually checked all the "automatic" internet settings first.

Why would they make it *worse*? I don't understand. :/

[Brad]

I will be in the same boat shortly I have a G4 iBook on order and plan to use it on my Airport network and file share with my eMac. Sooo, we might be in the same boat.

[dragonlady7]

I'd be really hopeless with it all if it weren't for the fact that I live with an inveterate tinkerer who, for a living, is a software engineer and developer for a Mac-only telecommunications firm. He's been playing with Macs since before they were Macs (Apple IIe) and so isn't afraid to comb through them and make them sorry for being bad.

But even he's baffled, and usually just restarts.
So...

Sigh.

Congrats on the new computer! I really want one but am flat broke (starting a new biz does that) so... maybe next year! In the meantime the borrowed Powerbook carries me over. See, if I had my own I'd have to do less filesharing... Nope. Doesn't justify it.

I'll try to write up a bug report / whatever you'd call it and post it over there sometime-- maybe if I make it real coherent, they'll be bowled over and actually fix it. Right? :/

[timster]

After you reboot from a crash, be sure to boot up Console (in the Applications/Utilities) folder, and then open up some crash logs for the "CrashReporter" folder.

You may be having problems with a particular network technology, e.g, SMB, AppleTalk, whatever. Try to identify it, then either fix it or eschew it. (You can force a connection type a couple ways, e.g., ftp://apple.com, [apple.com,...] smb://apple.com.)

(FYI, I had a real tricky problem with my nice, new iMac [running Jaguar] crashing when I left it run overnight. Turned out to be AppleTalk crashing. Toggled a few AppleTakl settings and presto, problem vanished.)

[Brad]

>>they'll be bowled over and actually fix it. Right?

Yeah the squeeky wheel and all that. It will be hard for them to sell those Airport base stations and wireless cards if enough of us are doing synchronized whining for too long. :) They will fix it just to shut us up.

That's the theory anyway.

[pleeker]

I've also had networking issues with two machines at home, and I made so many changes to settings I'm not sure what actually solved it in the end. So this advice may be useless. :)

You may have already done this, but if not ...

Go into Applications / Utilities / and open "Directory Access". Under the "Services" tab make sure AppleTalk is checked on.

For some reason, this is set 'off' as default. Turning it on enables you to browse for other connected machines rather than having to type in the IP address of the other machine.

I think that helped me.

[dragonlady7]

AppleTalk is what doesn't work for me.
If I browse to it via the Finder, it crashes horribly.
If I type in afp://computername.local, it doesn't work.

If I type in smb://computername.local---- no problem. And if the server becomes disconnected, the "disconnect / reconnect" dialog box actually works.

So, a tip for all of you:

Windows Filesharing is the most robust and successful type of filesharing between two Panther Macs.

Funny, no?

[timster]

>> Windows Filesharing is the most robust and successful type of filesharing between two Panther Macs.

I don't we can conclude that from an individual experience. In my office, we've already got dozens of Pantherized Macs Filesharing back and forth, without a glitch.

(Don't get me wrong -- I definitely feel your pain.)

Have you tried: (1) zapping the PRAM, (2) turning all AppleTalk stuff off.

When I had my AppleTalk crashes, I went around turning AppleTalk off everywhere, and then (later) turned things on one at a time as I needed them. Eventually, everything was back on, but the crashes never came back.