Mysterious shared server with same name appearing / disappearing

I have a mysterious and somewhat suspicious occurrence on my OSX Snow Leopard. Every now & then I get a shared network entry appear in the finder, and then disappear after say 5 minutes. The name is same as my machine's name uncapitalised. It shows as a PC server/beige box icon. If I try to connect it says:

The server "NAME" is available on your computer. Access the volumes and files locally.

I've changed my computer name under sys prefs > sharing and this duplicate device keeps the old name. Created a new login user and the same thing happens on that account. Looked on my router for connected devices but can't see anything.

I have Parallels installed but it's not open. Any ideas what could be causing this?

MachineElf

Posted 2011-04-08T15:46:18.380

Reputation: 223

Someone on AskDifferent is having the same issue – Josh – 2011-09-14T12:33:07.947

Answers

Sounds like you might have SMB (Windows) Sharing turned on.

To check, go to the System Preferences and click on Sharing. In the list on the left click on 'File Sharing' then there is a little button on the top right called 'options'. In the drop-down that appears check that SMB sharing is un-ticked.

Jedidiah

Posted 2011-04-08T15:46:18.380

Reputation: 151

Thanks Jed I checked, two other users are ticked for SMB although not the main box - http://gyazo.com/316c80e9c68104cf2e2a2e6791ee1880 is that still likely to cause it?

– MachineElf – 2011-09-23T12:10:57.257

No problem, I think that is probably the cause, you could try disabling it and see if it stops appearing. If you don't need file sharing with Windows I'd turn it off. – Jedidiah – 2011-09-23T12:31:05.773