[hudson1]

In my 15 years of Mac experience, this one has me stumped about as much as anything I've dealt with. When I try to turn on Personal File Sharing in 10.2 preferences, it goes to a perpetual starting up mode - "File Sharing Starting Up". It never turns on and I've left it for probably 30 minutes to see if it would eventually get going. There's no problem starting up the other sharing services in OS X (Windows, Web, FTP, etc.).

Here are some other symptoms and setup info:

I have three partitions on my eMac (384 MB) running 10.2.6. One partition is X and 9.2.2 (used for Classic), one is miscellaneous apps, and the third is 9.2.2-only (used for those rare times that I boot into 9).

Not only could I not start File Sharing in X, it wouldn't start while booted into either of the OS 9 systems.

I did get File Sharing to start eventually when booted into 9.2.2 (from its own partition) by unmounting the OS X and miscellaneous partitions. It started up instantly in that case.

Searching through Apples knowledge base, I found an obcure article (link below) that noted that a corrupt invisible file that exists on all volumes could by the problem. It's called "AppleShare PDS". I found those two invisible files (one on each of the bootable partitions), trashed them, reparied permisions, and then tried to start File Sharing in OS X again. No luck. I think this file and the associated article really only pertain to OS 9 and earlier so I suspect the problem lies somewhere in the X system.

Any thoughts on where this problem may lie? I'm guessing that there's some kind of X preference file that needs to be deleted and recreated but I can't find any Apple article to point me in the right direction.

Here's the Apple article that I read:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30635

[cdrgonzo20]

I had the same problem a year ago, and it turned out to be that I had installed Darwin streaming server and quicktime broadcaster. Make certain you do not have either of these programs, but especially not the streaming server as it conflicts with personal file sharing. That's all I know, hope it helps.

[hudson1]

Thanks for the tip. Is there a good way to tell if it's installed and how do I remove it if it is installed?

[Terri]

I have also seen this when there is another computer on the network with the exact same name,

[cdrgonzo20]

There are two ways to tell if it's installed. First, if you have never installed it, its not installed. Second, in your application folder there will be an item called something like Quicktime Streaming Server, or Darwin Streaming Server.

I feel for you, it was pure luck that I stumbled on the fix for my network when the same thing happened to me. I have no idea how the hell you're going to straighten it out otherwise.

Try repairing the permissions if nothing else works, probably won't do anything but worth a shot. Also, I seem to remember some terminal funk you can do to reconfigure Apache if that is the issue. Search for topics started by me in these forums, I think that's where I recieved the terminal info.

Good Luck.

[hudson1]

Thanks for the lead. I looked up the thread that you must have been referring to and it mentioned how to start Personal Web Sharing from the Terminal. I gave it a try and verified that worked by looking in the Preference Pane but as you know that particular service is not the one causing me trouble. But it makes me think I'm on the right track for diagnosis.

Does anyone know how to start Personal File Sharing from the Terminal? If I can learn that, I think (based on the dialog in cdrgonzo20's thread) get a read on what is failing in the personal file sharing service.