Screen Sharing does not accept my password anymore

Hi Thomas - You seem to know know what your doing...Thanks for the fix, however does not work for meI still have the same issues! When I click on my mac mini icon in my macbook finder I am automatically connected to the shared files (connected as 'my mac mini account name'), i proceed to click on share screen which gives me the pop up to choose either asking permission or registered user, I click 'As a registered user' and proceed to type in my (macbook account name and/or user) as you suggested but still no luck..tried using the mac mini user name and account name as well with still no luck. This is getting really frustrating and dont mind coming off as 'feeling stupid' 🙂 !!! Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated....

I've been trying various workarounds all day to make this work and after reading william's post about it auto connecting and earlier finder related stuff, for fun (and in desperation!) I clicked on disconnect in the finder window, then clicked share, used the full username, and BAM, in I went... to the headless mini !

This seemed to prove the earlier theory that finder might be connecting for file sharing one way, and screen sharing was broken in the 10.6.8 update (Thanks Apple!) and working another way, possibly presenting some kind of conflict in the SS connection/authentication process? Anyway now I am in. I should add that before I got in this way, the SS app was also crashing when I clicked on the sharing button in the finder and entered a name/pass combo.

Hope this helps others. Thanks for the ideas and workarounds.

Still not working for me, I have two different accounts with the same display name but different usernames on two systems. What are the chances of that? I thought (a few years ago) that the actual account name would take precedence, and also prevent a big security hole. Oh well.

th0mas_I, What if my Full Name and Account name are the same? When I set up my log in names on my Mac, I entered the full name with a capital for the first letter (i.e. Mary). The Account Name box was automatically populated with all lower case letters (i.e. mary). I manually changed the first letter to a capital letter so the Full Name and Account name are exactly the same.

So, due to this, your recommended fix (using the Account Name) is not working.

Note: I did confirm on a friend's Mac in which his Account Name had all lower case letters that your recommended fix did in fact work. However, this does not help me due to the situation I mentioned above.

I have been been using Screen Sharing for over 2 years with no problems until after I upgraded to 10.6.8.

If I go into System Preferences, then Accounts, then unlock the lock so I can make changes, then right click on my user name in the left side under "My Account", then click on "Advanced Options", then manually change my account name back to all lower case letters, then click OK, will this allow the Screen Sharing to work again? I have not tried this yet as there is a Warning in red font that says "Changing these settings might damage this account and prevent the user from logging in." Can you confirm whether this will fix my screen sharing situation without damaging my account login?

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

johnv6: To be honest, I don't know. The only thing that strikes me as a low-risk option to try is the one Jamy suggests, which was to disconnect as the registered user in the finder and try going directly to screen sharing.

I don't think the capitalization in the Account name is of any concern; however, spaces or non-alphanumeric characters may get special treatment (like escape characters used in html) on the system level that you cannot see in the usual OSX configuration dialogues.

I would strongly advise against changing the Account name without the guidance of an OSX system expert. I've never tried it myself and don't care to speculate on what sort of things get broken under the user-friendly cover of OSX when doing such a change. I know tinkering with a user account is generally a Bad Thing To Do in any unix environment, as it could impact file permissions and installed applications, among other things.

If it were me considering the same thing, I might try one of two options, in order of preference. Use at your own risk, your mileage may vary, professional driver on a closed course, and all that nonsense:

1. Clone the hard-drive on the mac I'm using as a console and boot up with it to verify it works ok. Once verified, shut down and disconnect the cloned drive. Now try changing the user account. If something blows up badly, simply restore the system drive from the clone and I'm back at square one.

2. Create a "throw-away" user account using the same syntax as my regular one. Then create or copy some files in various, sensible places for test purposes. Verify that the same login problem exists. Finally, do the change on the "throw away" account and see if it works, as well as runs applications ok. If you blow up that account or make the copied files unaccessible, nothing is lost. Just delete them along with the bogus account when you're done, and you're back to square one.

I chose the preference as option 1 restores me back to the exact configuration I started with, provided the drives don't fail or any bits get lost or damaged in transit. And I've done it often enough to know that I can do it reliably and everything on my mac that matters is backed up elsewhere and can be rebuilt if something goes really wrong. Option 2 doesn't depend on a backup, but creating, breaking, then deleting a user account might leave some remnants that could be unpredictable.

I don't think I know what I'm doing any more than the next person. I do have enough technical knowledge to get myself into deep trouble, and for that reason have gotten in the habit of preparing a backup plan B (usually cloning my entire system drive) any time I even think there's a risk of something breaking badly when trying something out. I thank the TSA for my acquiring the tools and skill at cloning drives as I went through about three hard drives a few years ago thanks to them slamming my equipment around at airport security.

th0mas_I,

Thank you for the reply. I was able to duplicate the issue on another 10.6.8 Mac computer in which the only thing different is the first letter of the Account Name is capital letter. The one with the lower case letter on the Account Name, screen sharing works. But, the one with the upper/capital letter does not.

Regarding the two options you recommended, I have a couple of questions:

1) Does a Time Machine backup qualify as meeting the minimum requirements of what you mentioned as "cloning the hard drive"? I do have a Time Machine backup that has backed up everything on the computer (operating system, applications, files, settings, etc).

2) What do you mean by "same syntax"?

Thanks for your help...

th0mas_I,

What I thought duplicated the issue on one Mac (per my last post) and then had the same setup on another Mac, it did not act the same. My household has 6 Macs in various forms (Minis, iMacs, Macbook Pros, etc). This issue is not consistent and I am not able to reproduce consistently across all Macs. I am able to screen share with 2 Macs, but 4 lost screen sharing capability. All have the same Full Name and Account Name (Account Name with a capital letter manually created for the first letter when user login was created). All the Macs have the same user name allowed for screen sharing. All are setup with "Back to My Mac" under MobileMe preferences.

I deleted the user (including home folder), rebooted, then created the same user name from scratch, then re-setup screen sharing and Mobile Me "Back to My Mac" in System Preferences. Did not work. Same issue as before I blew out the account and started over.

I have not yet tried creating a brand new user with a different user name and setting up screen sharing under that name. I will try tomorrow as I have now run out of time today.

Note: I have not had any previous trouble with screen sharing on ANY of our household's Macs until the last week or so (until after installing 10.6.8 update) when screen sharing became broken on most of our Macs.

Still looking for a fix. I hope Apple figures out what the problem is and issues a fix soon (if I cannot find a workaround).

johnv6: I have no experience using Time Machine. I scanned the feature page and decided it would be a bit awkward to set up with my systems and configurations, and was not clear enough for me to bet my system on it. It probably would get the job done on a single system backup, but I am not the person to validate if it would work or not.

For disc cloning on Macs, I've done it a couple times on my early 2008 MBP using SuperDuper. It's not free, but it was pretty inexpensive and easy to use. Also worked every time. I also use an earlier version (Dec 2010 maybe?) of Clonezilla, an open source program that you can load via a bootable usb stick. I haven't tested it out on the Macs, but it has handled numerous Windows laptops without a hitch. No reason it shouldn't also get-r-done on an Intel Mac, but I haven't tried that out since SuperDuper works fine as-is. FYI the later version of Clonezilla I downloaded in late May this year would not complete successfully on my wife's Toshiba laptop (64-bit Vista); however the Dec. 2010 version I still had worked fine.

Keep in mind that Clonezilla is a small linux kernel with some disk copying scripts included. It works on the system level and is A> Not user friendly and B> Certainly risky as any open-source software is, especially so since it works system-level commands in the background to copy a drive (or sector) bit-by-bit. So definitely don't just download it and run it if you're not comfortable with less (or zero) support than the built-in stuff like Time Machine.

That said, SuperDuper is an app designed for Macs and automates a number of cryptic background command-line activities driven by your careful choices in the application interface. Creating a reliable disc copy is risky no matter how you do it, but SuperDuper is definitely a bit more user friendly and less complicated than some other options out there.

Same syntax == characters in the same fashion. For example, if your Account name is Smith_J, create the expendable user account as something similar like Jones_C. Basically include the same variation from an all lower-case, no spaces or special characters Account name. That way you ought to be throwing the same challenge at the problem, only with an account that can be broken with no consequence.

andifor: I have to add that some of the attemps posted to work around this issue have been pretty clever. I think the only way I would have stumbled on your test with random caps would have been a typo after hours of trying other crap and getting delerious enough to start making mistakes LOL. It's clearly either a bug, or an oversight - something that enables a Lion feature while coincidentally breaking Screen Sharing in SL. I'm not one to desperately hang on tight to old tech, but I do plan to watch Lion age through it's first update or two before taking the leap.

andifor wrote:

And I wonder, who likes to spend the time cloning a disk, creating a new account / change an existing account if there are two valid solutions available:

Excellent point. The answer would be me LOL. I have the spare drive laying around and I go do something else while the clone is running. I get that not everyone has other systems to use or the hardware lying around to do that. Or the comfort level of such an operation for that matter.

I think the bothersome thing about this issue is that the successful workaround differs depending on each individual configuration. But I do agree on one point: try the easy stuff first before pulling out the spare hard drive and tinkering with user accounts. Maybe they'll fix it in 10.6.9 or with a patch if one ever comes out. I hear you on the compatibility stuff. I have a kick-butt all-in-one laser printer that absolutely gets broken if I let System Update put newer HP drivers on the systems that I use the scanner with :-(

Since that all-in-one is older than last week (new in August 2007), Microsoft even left it behind with Windows 7 (no network scanning).

andifor, what you recommended worked... 🙂 I changed a random character in user name on screen sharing dialog box to capital letter (i.e. Instead of Mary or mary, used mAry) and screen sharing was successful. I also tried capital first letter and capital second letter (i.e. MAry) and it also worked. I don't know "why" it worked... 😕

Yesterday, I was trying capital and lower case first letters (i.e. Mary and mary), but those did not work. So, it seems the key is making one of the other letters a capital... It has got to be a bug in 10.6.8 that hopefully Apple will fix soon...

Note: The fix for 10.6.8 that Apple released a few days ago through Software Update to fix something in the original 10.6.8 update did not fix the screen sharing problem. I have this fix/update now on all our Macs and was having the same problem until I followed your recommendation this morning...

Another word of thanks for this solution...I've been having more or less the same problem using my MacBookPro to connect to my MacMini. Both are running 10.6.8. In my case, Screen Sharing IS accepting my password and username (as Samira, which is what it is supposed to be per the settings on the MacMini) and takes me to the "Connecting" screen but then unexpectedly quits, with the sign-in screen trying to connect. The only way to get out of the sign-in screen is to log out entirely. Force quitting Screen Sharing does not work, restarting the MacMini and the MacBookPro did not solve the problem. After reading this thread, I tried entering sAmira instead of Samira and this time it worked. Glad to have a workaround but this is an especially frustrating bug.

Has someone reported this bug to Apple? I could not find it on OpenRadar - I really hope we do not have to wait for the rumoured 10.6.9 before this bug is fixed - I have so many headless displays and not being able to screen share is horrible. I have found the capital letter sometimes works, sometime does not. It is really strange, because AFP authenticates fine, while VNC does not using the same allowed credentials. Please Apple fix this ASAP!

Thanks to another user in another thread I found a solution that works for me.

My solution (based on his/her tip) is here

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3226287?answerId=16053829022#16053829022

And a support tip about account names is here

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1428

The basic problem is that there are 2 different names in the OS for your account - a "Full Name" and an "Account Name". Changing your Account Name is a difficult and potentially dangerous thing to do and doesn't provide the solution for Screen Sharing. It turns out that Screen Sharing relies on the "Full Name" and if the computers you want to screen share between have the same Full Name a conflict arises that it might not be able to resolve. My solution was to simply append either 'MBP" or "MM" to my "Full Name" and log out and back in again on both computers - problem solved - and oh-by-the-way Screen Sharing logs in MUCH faster now. Full Name is changed easily in the Accounts system pref for a given account. In 10.6.8 it's actually called "Full Name".

If you still want to muck around with your Account Name unlock the Accounts preference pane, select the account in the left hand list and then control-click the account name. A menu titled "Advanced Options..." appears. If you open it you can change your Account Name but as the dialog there says - BEWARE, THIS CAN CAUSE BIG PROBLEMS.