I'm having an issue with my imac (Rev A G5) that just sprung up today. Basically all applications ae running fine and I can access the toolbaer the the dock fine (running 10.3 by the way) but when I click on the desktop I get the beach ball and it's not going away. I restarted the finder several times to see if it would help, but it's still happening. Any ideas?
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Not a day at the beach...but a beachball nonetheless
- Thread starter silverback66
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Delete the Finder preferences and restart maybe. Check with Activity Monitor first to make sure it's Finder and not something else that's causing you grief. Have you repaired permissions too? 
I've been using mac's since the apple II so the is kind of embarrassing.....how do you do all of those things?
silverback66 said:I've been using mac's since the apple II so the is kind of embarrassing.....how do you do all of those things?
Repairing permissions is easy, just go into Disk Utility and select your HD then click the "repair permissions" button. You'll find the Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder and it will show everything that's running on your comp (and hence possibly your problem).
Hope that helps.
P.S. you should be commended for the cleverness of your title to this thread.
Okay, sorry I should have been more specific.
Activity Monitor is in your Utilities folder and it'll show you the processes running on your computer. By default, it'll only show you the processes run by your user so you'll have to select All Users from a drop down menu at the top. Sort by CPU and then RAM usage to see if there's a process using up a lot of resources.
Disk Utility is also in the Utilities folder. Use this to repair the permissions on your drive by selecting the drive on the left hand pane and then clicking Repair Permissions down the bottom(ish). part of the app.
Look for a file named com.apple.finder.plist (which will be inside a folder named Preferences) and remove it from said folder and restart. This will mean that a new default version of that file will be created however it'll be at the expense of your Finder settings (preferences). If this doesn't help, the good news is that you can run the process in reverse by putting the original file back where you found it and restarting again to get back to where you started.
Activity Monitor is in your Utilities folder and it'll show you the processes running on your computer. By default, it'll only show you the processes run by your user so you'll have to select All Users from a drop down menu at the top. Sort by CPU and then RAM usage to see if there's a process using up a lot of resources.
Disk Utility is also in the Utilities folder. Use this to repair the permissions on your drive by selecting the drive on the left hand pane and then clicking Repair Permissions down the bottom(ish). part of the app.
Look for a file named com.apple.finder.plist (which will be inside a folder named Preferences) and remove it from said folder and restart. This will mean that a new default version of that file will be created however it'll be at the expense of your Finder settings (preferences). If this doesn't help, the good news is that you can run the process in reverse by putting the original file back where you found it and restarting again to get back to where you started.
Okay I tried those things and no luck. I do have some additional info though if it helps. I'm using an MX1000 and the problem only happens when I try to right click.
I guess the MX1000 is some kind of USB mouse/trackball? Do you have another mouse you can test it with? Even if it's an Apple one-button mouse, you can Control-click to perform a right click.silverback66 said:
Nope, it locks up when I do that too. All I'm trying to do is right click and make a new folder but finder gets hung.
Well, I have to ask
Are you using the latest version of Panther? (10.3.9).
If not, download the combo update and install it. After each OS update, please repair permissions, and after each permission repair, be sure to restart your computer!
In addition to that, there are other ways to improve the way your computer behaves, like updating prebindings and running daily, weekly and monthly scripts. Although these functions are available through apple's terminal application, there is a GUI application (system optimizer) which will do these things for you quickly and easily.
Also, you didn't tell us what you see when the computer hangs. Yes, it hangs, but you should be able to open activity monitor and see the current process that takes place at the time your computer hangs. If that fails, do this. Open activity monitor, have it show all active processes, then try to recreate the circumstances that make your computer hang. There must be definitely a process that will be shown to draw some processing power from your cpu. try and locate that. Since only the finder is hanging (that's what I understood from what you said), the activity monitor should be selectable.
Do these things and come back here to show the results.
Are you using the latest version of Panther? (10.3.9).
If not, download the combo update and install it. After each OS update, please repair permissions, and after each permission repair, be sure to restart your computer!
In addition to that, there are other ways to improve the way your computer behaves, like updating prebindings and running daily, weekly and monthly scripts. Although these functions are available through apple's terminal application, there is a GUI application (system optimizer) which will do these things for you quickly and easily.
Also, you didn't tell us what you see when the computer hangs. Yes, it hangs, but you should be able to open activity monitor and see the current process that takes place at the time your computer hangs. If that fails, do this. Open activity monitor, have it show all active processes, then try to recreate the circumstances that make your computer hang. There must be definitely a process that will be shown to draw some processing power from your cpu. try and locate that. Since only the finder is hanging (that's what I understood from what you said), the activity monitor should be selectable.
Do these things and come back here to show the results.
I might try uninstalling any special mouse drivers you have (probably the one that came with your MX1000). After you make sure you're using the most recent version of course -- check the company's web site and see if there's an update. If that doesn't work, you may have a corrupted system that needs to be reinstalled, sorry.