Finder back button

[axeldtf]

I've noticed when i leave my mac on for a long period of time.. (3-4 days without shutting down) weird things start happening. Thumbnails for pictures look odd, some do not even represent the right picture. Today i am having a weird issue, not really a big deal but my back button is gone. Here is a pic to indicate what i mean.

 

[Makosuke]

Yikes, that's a new one to me.

If you routinely see behavior that weird after only a few days turned on there's something wrong with your OS install (or, possibly, hardware, though that seems a lot less likely). Once in a while minor glitches can crop up when a Mac hasn't been restarted in a while, but I routinely leave computers on for weeks or even months at a stretch without issue.

Have you installed any system hacks or anything else system-level like an antivirus scanner?

If not, I would have to suggest you get out the discs that came with the computer (or OS upgrade discs, if you have them) and do an Archive and Install, preserving users etc. Then of course keep doing Software Update until everything is current. That should be relatively painless, if somewhat time consuming, and if the problem is with a bum OS install it will fix it.

If it doesn't help, you could try creating a new user account and using that for a while to see if it also displays the issues--if not, then it's bad prefs in your user account and you can start from there. If so... well, not really sure.

Do also make sure you have a current backup, regardless, but that's good advice whether anything is acting up or not.

 

[Gregg2]

Maybe a com.apple.Finder.plist swap would fix it.

 

[sammich]

Does quitting Finder (it should reopen by itself) do anything to fix the problems?

You can either force quit Finder from the menu or via Activity Monitor or via terminal with 'killall Finder'.

 

[axeldtf]

relaunching finder fixed it, sometimes it just clears up on it's own, like after watching a dvd or after waking the computer from sleep

 

[arogge]

Is the button really inoperable, or is it just the graphic arrow that's not being displayed? If it's only the graphic, the problem is probably related to a GUI caching error. Restarting Finder usually fixes such problems. I've had my fonts go crazy, and graphics disappear or get mixed up with other graphics. Sometimes I really could've used a way to easily shut off all of the unnecessary OS X junk that does nothing to make the job easier. This would include animations, faded menus, and so on. All it does is eat memory, and when something goes wrong, Finder can come crashing down in the middle of a job due to memory overruns.