Finder hanging at login

[noshooz]

On one of the user accounts on my eMac (G4, 1.42GHz, 512MB RAM), after logging in finder is hanging. Apps can be run, like Safari, Sys Prefs, etc., but Finder won't. Which means no Finder window to be able to launch any application that's not on the Dock. The user can't even log off. All that displays on the screen is the usual stuff on the right side of the bar (time, user name, Spotlight icon...) but no menu stuff for finder - and the spinning beach ball on the desktop. The only way to get out is to switch users and reboot via "sudo shutdown -r now" in Terminal. Any guesses as to why this is happening?? It's only happening on the one account. The other two are fine.

 

[mad jew]

Do you have any theme changers installed? Maybe try finding a file named com.apple.finder.plist in the Preferences folder and deleting it before restarting. If you have Tiger or later, then Spotlight should help you find it quickly, and bypass Finder. Can you get into Activity Monitor? Does relaunching Finder help (COMMAND-OPTION-ESCAPE)?

 

[noshooz]

Relaunching Finder does nothing. It still just sits at the spinning beach ball.

EDIT: I used Spotlight to launch Activity Monitor, it said "Finder(not responding)." It supposedly restarts itself when I force quit it, but hangs again upon restarting. This after I deleted the com.apple.finder.plist file. This is an account that is rarely used, I may just delete it and recreate it. I can't even log off the account. I have to reboot the computer to get the logon to quit.

 

[mad jew]

Okay, check your Login Items in System Preferences. This is pretty strange.

 

[noshooz]

I wound up just deleting that account. It was set up for my wife to use and she only used it once, to put music on her iPod when I got her one for Christmas. She's still a slave to Micro$oft, has a Vista laptop.
I was able to create a new account that I could log in to and it loaded up fine - and very quickly.