iCloud Connecting iCloud drive borks Finder SOLVED!

[Jamesehale]

Recently I noticed my Finder was becoming unresponsive. Spinning beachball, choosing Open or Save from any open apps would freeze the corresponding app. I then turned off icloud drive and Finder now worked flawlessly.
Turning on iCloud Drive, would after a few seconds once again bork finder. i would also get an alert regarding missing helper application. Calls to Apple service could not resolve issue. I have done safe boot (no change) new system install (no change). i finally got rid of the missing helper app alert after reading a forum post regarding itunes/Music (launched Music and attempted turning on iCloud drive) but still Finder would effectively freeze.
Similar to others , when I turn off iCloud drive I am warned the process is incomplete with the progress bar barely showing any progress. I procede to stop it anyway and finder works again.
I am on an M1 iMac. My user folder is located on an external thunderbolt SSD.
On my macmini iCloud drive works fine. The same with my iPad.
All use my “mac” email address for log in.
I am stumped. Has anyone who has experienced this found a solution?
Perhaps hidden iCloud drive pref files that can be deleted?

 

[Jamesehale]

So it seems I am alone in this :-(

 

[Jamesehale]

I think I have finally solved this.
From Apple Discussion Thread https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7102088
"Force iCloud Drive to Sync"

Go to Finder/Library/Application Support/Cloud Docs and drag the folder to the trash
Open Activity Monitor and stop the processes "cloudd" and "bird"

Did the above and enabled iCloud Drive and went through the list of apps using iCloud Drive, deleting those I have either removed or do not use ... Finder still working, no "missing helper" alert, and the progress indicator seems to be progressing!

Of course, I will report back if this doesn't work but for now, it seems solved