G5 Shameful Finder Crashes

You should call Apple and explain the problem. It's 1 year Apple Care so if they can't help you fix it yourself, then you should be able to send it back and have them fix it, I think.

Have you installed any new RAM recently? I know that RAM which is even the slightest bit faulty can cause crashes all over the place... though whether or not it would fit your circumstances, I'm not sure.

Good luck getting it fixed

Go Here,
Tell them your problem, and you won't put up with anything less than a complete re-write, no more paint jobs etc. In fact, I would suggest every single person here on macrumors to send it to them. Maybe if they got 10,000 letters saying how crappy the finder *still* is, they trash it and start over.

And to the original poster, the reason it is "multi-threaded" but doesn't really behave that way is the same reason Quicktime is "multi-threaded" and doesn't behave that way, its ported from Crap-OS 9 which was NOT a multithreaded or multi tasked OS...probably has some nasty pascal or something still lurking in that code...

Try posting on the support forum on apple.com if you haven't already done that. If you're the only one (or one of few) with this problem, then I can think of three possibilities.
1. Some vital part of Finder or OSX has been damaged. This can be because some vital file has been deleted or changed. In this case you probably will have to reinstall OSX.
2. Or there can be a conflict caused by an installed program, some wierd corrupt file in the file system, some external device, or the file-system itself may somehow be corrupted. There may be clues to what causes the conflict in the Console logs (see Applications/Tools/Console). Solution hunt down the source of the conflict and remove/fix it. Probably easier said than done.
3. A hardware component is broken. Considering the nature of the problem it would probably be the hard drive or RAM.

I'm not really sure how reasonable this is or if it helps at all.

Tip ---- try listing through all files in the Terminal by typing the following and then the password of an Administrator:
sudo find /

This will take a while, but if it completes the listing without error, then your filesystem should be OK at least.

The only problem with Sherlock is that it can be corrupted by some plug-ins that somebody may have installed.

Some of these problems probably wouldn't crop up until there is an OS update that finally kills a plug-in.

Could also be a corrupt preference file, bad/corrupt index, and/or incorrect permission setting on a key file.

I'm always amazed at the people who blame the finder for mistakes, when I've never had these issues. What makes you so certain that it's the OS and not a case of PEBKAC?

I've been using OS X since the beta of 10.0, and I've only ever had three kernel panics on nine macs being used by six people over the last four years. Granted, I do maintain them pretty decently, but still... You'd think that we'd have more problems if this was a hardware or software issue, considering that even little kids use one or two of the machines.

The best advice I can give you is to check all your connections, invcluding opening the case and being sure all your cards and RAM are firmly seated. Once you've done that, try running DiskWarrior (or anything other than Norton) to make sure that you don't have any major system issues. OS X tends not to break down the way Windows does, but you might need to either repair a directory or optimize the drive after a while. It's just good policy to do these things and should help you avoid future issues.

How did fsck and Disk First Aid turn out?

stevehaslip said:

i did try the sudo find but after 3 mins it crashed! just like it did when i tried the sudo weekly tasks. i restarted and thought that if finder was being cranky then maybe if i deleted the preference file it might help? i tried searching again and it lasted about 2 seconds longer than before!

still not a fix though...

Click to expand...

This is good. This means we've started to narrow down the cause of the problem. This seems to point to some sort of corrupted file-system entry. If you're able to find out which file or folder it crashes on, then you may be able to delete it or fix it in some other way.

stevehaslip said:

by fsck you mean the sudo find command in terminal? i did that again and it worked fine but it didnt throw up any errors. it finished fine, but then in the background finder crashed and i had to restart

i repaired permissions on the disc before, im doing it again now.

Click to expand...

No I mean the file system check (fsck) you type in when you boot into single user mode (command-s).

Though Disk First Aid will probably require a boot from one of the System disks in order to repair your normal boot drive.

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fsck and DFA both repair the catalog/file system errors on the drive, and will need to be run AGAIN if they make any repairs on the drive (they don't always fix everything in one pass).

thatwendigo said:

I'm always amazed at the people who blame the finder for mistakes, when I've never had these issues. What makes you so certain that it's the OS and not a case of PEBKAC?

Click to expand...

ouch...

stevehaslip said:

ive never done the fsck check then, do i just restart in single user mode and hold command and s?
is that also why the hardware test wouldnt work, cos i have it set on multi user with the loggin window?

Click to expand...

Reboot and holding command-s will boot into single user mode.

There are directions on the screen for what to type in to run fsck.

When you are done type reboot

stevehaslip said:

i changed the prefs to loggin automatically as me, the admin user so its in single user mode and held shift but it doesnt work it just loads straight in to the os and starts as normal. am i not doing something right here?

Click to expand...

Reboot or turn machine on

immediately start holding command-s

follow directions on screen

type reboot

--- http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106388

Single user mode will boot to a text screen, no GUI.

It's as close to the to OS 9's booting with extensions off as you can get under OS X.

On the windows side, a hard crash means that you wouldn't even get the "spinning beach ball" or similar progress meter, it just stops working! This means your CPU is probably undervolted, OR overheated.

Ram crash is almost always a cause for a restart--for games, that'd either mean crash to desktop or restart--for Macs it may be slightly different.

If your hard drive was really messed up, I don't think it would even be able to load the OS, though I WOULD be interested in seeing if you have "bad sectors" (or the Mac OS equivalent).

Perhaps a new firmware is needed (or BIOS equivalent?)

Just repair the disk instead of verify, see if it'll repair it.

Though it may take multiple passes, until a clean one comes up or DFA says it's non-repairable.

If DFA can't do it run fsck (run until clean pass), then go back to DFA.

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If there are errors that fsck and DFA can't repair, you may need to buy a drive utility.

stevehaslip said:

if it cant repair it then instead of buying a drive utility can i just call apple? or take it to a centre?

Click to expand...

It's a software issue, which usually can be corrected by formating the drive to zeros and then starting over.

Or using a drive utility to repair the volume.

Yeah, remember if fsck doesn't work and you're drive is pretty much, well fscked, your G5 is still under warranty so the hdd will be replaced for free. Yeah Finder doesn't like drive errors. Possibly the error is on an indexing file of finder. All in all cmd+s at the startup chime (hold down till the loading screen appears) and typing fsck -y should fix it (mulitple passes may be needed, just repeat multiple times until you get no more errors). You should be fine.