News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

December 3, 2007

troubleshooting

iChat video/screen sharing troubles? Kill Internet Sharing.

Posted Dec. 3, ’07, 12:12 PM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Troubleshooting

sharingichat.jpgWhile iChat is not my daily IM client of choice, its video and audio chatting functionality render it superior to Adium in the multimedia department—when they work, that is. Last week, I was trying to get a video chat working with a colleague back in Macworld’s San Francisco error. Despite the fact that I’d had it working in Tiger, on Leopard, iChat continually popped up “Connection errors.” So much for just working.

Fast forward to last night, when I finished installing Leopard on my Mom’s iMac G5. The main attraction for doing so, besides Time Machine, was to get screen sharing running so that I could help my parents troubleshoot without leaving the comfort of my own apartment (of course, in the New England winter, sometimes you can’t escape the apartment even if you want to). Lo and behold, when trying to initiate screen sharing via iChat, I ended up with the same “connection error” problem.

But as I learned from a long stint in tech support, any problem you’re having, others have already likely encountered, and perhaps solved. A quick turn to the Google, and it was none other than our colleagues over at Mac OS X Hints who fingered the culprit: the dastardly Internet Sharing. Honestly, I’m not even sure why I had Internet Sharing on, but on it was. I disabled it and voilà: success! Video chats and screen sharing fully restored. So, if you’re running into the same problem, give that a shot.


2 Comments

John said:

That was a problem with standard screen sharing using Back to My Mac under 10.5.0. However, the issue was fixed in 10.5.1.

December 3, 2007 3:30 PM
Tony said:

Never had this option checked and my screen sharing still doesn't work. Both of us had Screen Sharing enabled and using 10.5.1

December 4, 2007 7:55 AM

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