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My Mac Mini has gone insane - Finder keeps crashing and restarting, help!

M

Mac Pro 2009

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 3, 2014
88
0
Hey guys!
I'm having some big issues here, I don't know why... I did a clean install of mavericks about a week after it came out and everything worked like a dream until this morning when I logged in and my screen started flashing like crazy with this message "The last time you opened Finder, it unexpectedly quit reopening windows. Do you want to try to reopen it's windows again?" With two options to choose from but neither Wouk would respond and the screen would just keep on flashing this message like crazy... It was horrible... I had to shut it down by keeping the button pushed... Now I restarted it and everything seems "fine" again but I am terribly worried. All my work is done on this machine, what should I do to diagnose the issue?

It's a 2011 Mac Mini.
 
53kyle

53kyle

macrumors 65816
Mar 27, 2012
1,282
111
Sebastopol, CA
Don't be worried yet. Obviously the first thing to do is back up your computer with time machine. That will make it so you always have a current backup. Just leave the time machine drive plugged in and leave time machine on all the time and it will automatically back up your mac frequently. You know how to do a clean install, so if a problem occurs again, it wouldn't be too much of a problem to just do another clean install, would it? That would be even easier to do with a time machine backup. The other option would be to see if using disk utility to repair disk/disk permissions fixes it.
 
Last edited:
M

Mac Pro 2009

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 3, 2014
88
0
53kyle said:
Don't be worried yet. You know how to do a clean install, so if it happens again, it wouldn't be too much of a problem to just do another clean install, would it? The other option would be to see if using disk utility to repair disk/disk permissions fixes it
Click to expand...

I wonder how this could have happened in the first place, I haven't installed any new apps, downloaded anything in a month! Hopefully it's not a hardware problem and I hope I did not damage my mac by turning it off the way I did...

One thing to consider though is that I usually unplug my mac once I turn it off to protect it against power surges, is that a bad practice?
 
F

fa8362

macrumors 68000
Jul 7, 2008
1,571
497
The title of your post doesn't match the content. In the title you say your computer "keeps crashing," yet in the body, you imply that a screen message was flashing, you shut the computer down manually, and it is fine now. Which is it?

You should always have anything you can't afford to lose backed up on an external hard drive.
 
Fishrrman

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
28,343
12,458
[[ One thing to consider though is that I usually unplug my mac once I turn it off to protect it against power surges, is that a bad practice? ]]

Better solution:
- Get a good surge protector/power strip
- Plug the Mini (and the rest of your peripherals) into it
- When you shut down the Mini, reach down and turn the power strip OFF
- Just before you restart the Mini, reach down and turn the power strip ON

And -- get an external drive, and use CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to create a bootable clone of your internal drive.
 
S

SoCalReviews

macrumors 6502a
Dec 31, 2012
582
212
53kyle said:
Don't be worried yet. Obviously the first thing to do is back up your computer with time machine. That will make it so you always have a current backup. Just leave the time machine drive plugged in and leave time machine on all the time and it will automatically back up your mac frequently. You know how to do a clean install, so if a problem occurs again, it wouldn't be too much of a problem to just do another clean install, would it? That would be even easier to do with a time machine backup. The other option would be to see if using disk utility to repair disk/disk permissions fixes it.
Click to expand...

All the OS X backup and Mavericks fresh reinstall suggestions I keep reading about are starting to remind me of the good ole' Windows 95, 98 and XP Service Pack era where MS inundated it's users with non stop version releases and updates that weren't always ready for prime time... and that definitely isn't a good sign. I thought moving to Macs would leave these issues behind. I hope Apple reconsiders what are now becoming annual OS X makeovers. :(
 
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