Continuous error about Connection Failed

I was getting this error message at startup on my Macbook Pro - "Connection Failed. There was an error connecting to the server XXXXXX. Check the server name or IP address, and then try again..."

The straightforward fix for me was to go to System Preference/Accounts/Login items and remove an external HDD that is attached to my Airport Extreme router. Just check these login items for anything that might be searching for the server in question and remove it from this login items list.

Cheers.

My problem was exactly as you described, but I didn't connect the dots relating it to a recent attempt to view a PDF on a decommissioned server. After I deleted Adobe Synchronizer from the login items, the problem went away.

I recently got this same error when trying to connect to a shared printer on my Windows Vista machine from the Mac mini recently upgraded to Lion.

What worked for me was clicking the "Connect As..." button on the top right of the finder window after selecting the name of the computer (under Shared). I put in a Registered User for a username and password from the Vista PC. No matter how hard I click the checkbox for "Remember this password in my keychain" it does not for very long 😉 and sometimes I forget that Connect As button is there, it's so elusive.

Mandy

Hello, I'm a Mac... and I'm a PC... I'm a both.

My wife had this error for two years and none of the solutions above worked. I started having this error a week ago, and stumbled across a solution somewhat by serendipity.

What led to it was the fact that in both cases the error began when we connected to a different new wifi transmitter while visiting, coincidentally enough, different grandchildren on different continents. The solution amounted to clearing completely the Location list.

Here's the step-by-step solution that worked for both machines.

1) Open Network in System Preferences

2) At the top of the dialog box you will see " Location " Click on the name next to it or the up/down arrow to get a drop menu of prior locations. The current location will be at the top of the list.

3) At the bottom of the list is "Edit Locations". Click on that. You get a "Locations" box with a list of names, and at the bottom, +, – , and gear icons.

4) Starting at the bottom of that list of locations, select a name, then click on the – , until there is only one location, the current one, left.

5) Click on the + to get a new location, and make sure you are connected to the new location (to connect to the new location you may have to Renew DHCP Lease or event go through the Connection failed rigamarole you are by now so familar with)

6) Go back to the Locations box. Click on Edit Lactions, select the penultimate location (the only one that was left after step 4 and eliminate it by clicking – icon .

7) Restart

The downside to this solution is you will loose easy connection in prior locations, and you will have to reenter the passwords for those as you revisit those locations. But this is a trivial price to pay for resolving this error.

Final note: it may be possible to do this in fewer steps, but this is exactly what worked for me, and now, thank God, I have no way to check an alternate procedure.

This did not work for me.

I have a vpn and I access my files using go to server

The problem has only emerged since I upgraded to Lion...

go to system preferences, network, accounts, look for "network account server" and click on "join", click on "open directory utility" and enable "active directory"

guys, it's a stupid dns issue. i'm not sure if it's on the router or somewhere in computer but if you change the dns info in network then it will fix it. so for example, i change mines from 10.0.1.1 to 8.8.8.8 (using google's dns but it doesn't have to be)

stupid macs. all of my changes that i've done so far works only for a moment and then macs become stupid again. macs are dumb machines!!

Sticky,

Same here. I only got it once I upgraded to Lion. I get it wheter I'm connected to the Internet or not. I even disconnected everything from my iMac excpet for the power cord.

I still got the message.

So frustrating.

Not sure if it will help anyone but I had the same problem and solved it by going to the Go option on the Finder menu and selecting Connect to Server. On the top line of the dialog box is a button to drop down a list of recently connected Servers, at the bottom is a clear option. Clicking this (and making sure I did not have the servers in the start at loging preference) solved the problem.

None of the solutions help me and my problem, so now I am contacting my system administrator, hope he can help me. ****, thats me! so what do I do now Apple?

I had the same issue. When I opened iPhoto, or Media from within Keynote, I would get the connection error message. I opened Finder, went to my Pictures folder and right clicked on iPhoto Library and selected Show Package Contents. Then I double clicked the Originals folder. From here you have to open each folder, one at a time, and look at the icon to the left of the photo name. If you see a little diagonal arrow in the bottom left corner of the icon, move that photo to the trash. Do that for each of the photos that have that arrow on the icon. These are not actual photos, they are links to photos that are on a server that iPhoto is looking for.

You might want to make note of the photo names to see if you can find them on another computer or device somewhere and bring them back into iPhoto. Oh yeah, do this with iPhoto closed. After trashing these links, iPhoto should open without the error message.

This one is killing me because I felt like I was getting close and then I got the error again.

NONE of the fixes on this forum that have been suggested has fixed this error for me on my MBP.

I use to only get this error at work and it was trying to connect to a shared drive on my home Mac.

So I opened up Console and decided to see what popped up when I got the error. When it did, I noticed that it said: "Warning: accessing obsolete X509Anchors" and it also had that drive mentioned in the error. So I thought "That's it!!"

I looked up that issue and it turns out that the X509Anchors were important to communicate with Leopard, but are no longer used in Snow Leopard. Now that made perfect sense because I started getting this error when I upgraded the computer that the shared connection was on to Snow Leopard. But I couldn't find a solution anywhere to the problem. Somewhere I read that this has to do with Spotlight and the Entourage Database. So I tried to rebuild that via Entourage and that made it angry!! It started popping up immediately and at home (which it rarely did before).

So at work, I turned it on and killed Entourage and opened Console to see if the problem happened again. Theoretically it should not have happened. Yet - there it is! Only this time, no error message was displayed in the Console. So now I am baffled.

I saw the post by @PBRDesign and I originally thought this was the case, because around the same time this happened, I upgraded my iPhoto. And I have been having new issues with iPhoto not syncing with my iPhone properly. But this error happens even when iPhoto is not running.

I once had it at the apple store and they could not figure it out.

I'm going back to them today with new information and see if I can get this fixed. Like I said - IT'S DRIVING ME NUTS!!

If anyone else is having the same frustrating issues, I'll let you konw if we find the cure.