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Finder is dead...

someguy

someguy

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Dec 4, 2005
2,351
21
Still here.
...which would be fine accept for that my startup is not working right anymore.

When I came home from work today and fired the machine up, it took forever... By the time I got to the desktop, the Dock appeared, and my wallpaper, and nothing else. The cursor was moving very slowly (my higher speed preference had not kicked in yet) and all that I have on the menubar is the Spotlight icon. In fact, the menubar itself is only a centimeter wide on the screen, just enough to fill the background of the Spotlight icon.

When I click the Finder icon in the Dock, it brings the desktop icons up and eventually the remainder of the menubar (without my menubar icons), however Finder does not run. No black triangle beneath the icon, no "Finder" in the menubar, nothing.

I've deleted the Finder plist file, deleted any fonts that Font Doctor X said may be troublesome, deleted all the apps that I had installed this morning when it last worked properly (probably something to do with the problems I'm having now), and rebooted a few times.

Now, it starts up at normal speed and hangs at the point where my menubar and menubar items would normally load, and then behaves as described above. I don't know what else to do. If I click the Finder icon in the Dock to get things kind of going again, then open Firefox or something and manually uncheck and recheck to show the menubar items I use in System Preferences, then you wouldn't know anything was wrong, accept for that Finder isn't running.

Can someone help me get this back to normal (hopefully without reinstalling Tiger)? My machine is a PowerBook G4 15" 1.5GHz and 1.5GB RAM, Tiger 10.4.7.

Thanks in advance! :)

P.S. I know there are other threads on this problem but reading them didn't help me much, so hopefully someone can help me here.
 
This just in: Problem persists with other/new user accounts as well. That's a good sign.. <gulp> ..right?? :(
 
Sorry to not be of any help in advance:

This happened to me a while back when my Powerbook (as it was then) was still in the 90 day warranty for free telephone support and Apple advised me to do a fresh install. You can (presumably) backup all your files which you should already have done.

After this, reinstall OSX. You'll still keep all your files from your backup, and it is a good way of making sure you're back on track.

I have noticed though that a harddrive (which is usually the cause - e.g. corrupted files etc) which has let you down like this is likely to do it again in the future. Beware.
 
quigleybc said:
Can you force quit the finder, and relaunch?
Click to expand...
No. It is not running, therefore it cannot be Force Quit, nor can it be launched. :(

@Maxiseller, thanks for the information. I really don't want to have to reinstall OSX, but obviously I will if I need to. There's got to be something I can do, though.

Does anyone have any ideas of what I can do to find the cause of this problem? I'm relatively new to OSX, so I'm not really familiar with the tools and whatnot like I am with Windows.
 
I've seen this many times at my workplace - try doing a "Safe Boot": hold the shift key while your Mac is starting up and don't let go until you get to the login screen - it takes longer than a regular startup - the words "SAFE BOOT" should appear in red. Now log in as usual - the Finder should appear and there should be files in the trash. Empty the trash and reboot normally and it should be okay.

Hope this helps!
 
Sounds to me like the hard-drive is possibly starting to go, maybe some bad sectors... run Disk Utility's disk repair (in the Utilities folder) over it first to see what that throws up, if anything.

Exact same symptoms happened on my friend's iMac before it had be to taken back under warranty to get the hard drive replaced.

Regardless of what it is, a back-up now would be a very wise thing to do, if you can get an external device to work with the machine.
 
Blue Velvet said:
Sounds to me like the hard-drive is possibly starting to go, maybe some bad sectors... run Disk Utility's disk repair (in the Utilities folder) over it first to see what that throws up, if anything.

Exact same symptoms happened on my friend's iMac before it had be to taken back under warranty to get the hard drive replaced.

Regardless of what it is, a back-up now would be a very wise thing to do, if you can get an external device to work with the machine.
Click to expand...
Already backed up, and Disk Utility's Repair Disk button is grayed out. I Verified Disk and everything was fine. Is there something I can do to be able to Repair Disk?

Going to try the Safe Mode idea next. :)
 
Safe Mode did not help. In fact, the problem happened there, too. I'm back in a normal boot session with no joy.

Off to search the net for other possible fixes. Thanks so far, you guys (and girls ;) )!
 
If you can transfer files, now would be the time to do the dirty stuff and do a fresh install. Then I'd run the system updates once you get all your programs installed.
 
benthewraith said:
If you can transfer files, now would be the time to do the dirty stuff and do a fresh install. Then I'd run the system updates once you get all your programs installed.
Click to expand...
I'm backing up all recent data now, but I refuse to re-install until I feel it's absolutely necessary. May be a bad move on my part, but I can't help but feel there is something more I can do.

Just downloaded AppleJack. Any thoughts before I reboot in SUM and have at it?
 
Ran everything AppleJack has to offer. Returned no errors anywhere, yet still no joy.

For what it's worth, the apps I installed today before rebooting and finding the problems I have now were:

Zazen (demo)
Soundflower 1.1
GoogleFill
Viou 2.5
Dockless 1.3.3

...and to the best of my knowledge, I've properly uninstalled all of the above.
 
Everytime I log in, the Trash bin contains a new file with the name:

Growl-8422955D-7490-41C0-A3BE-A15EDF494DA9-321-000000008E0D7FE2.growlRegDict

I haven't checked, but I'd imagine the actual filename varies somewhere within all those numbers and letters, but you get the idea.

Does this mean anything to anyone?
 
Finder is running according to Activity Monitor. Shouldn't their be a black triangle beneath it like the other apps have?

Anyways, I've removed a few other apps, including Growl, Application Enhancer, and a few remaining plist files that I found from Dockless and Zazen. No joy, but just letting everyone know.

Also, another clue is that my menubar items disappear everytime I log out and back in (obviously including restarts and shutdowns). It's not saving the items I leave there, but once I log in and get going, I can enable them in System Preferences like normal.
 
Fixed via Archive & Install. Thanks to everyone that tried to help me find another way, but I just gave up and popped the DVD in. :)
 
If you see yourself installing things like what you had ( and I'm guessing messed up your system) keep a backup of a working system folder, and everytime you up update your OS make a fresh backup. I keep one so I might not have to re-install.

It's most useful to keep /system but /library can go bad as well. I keep every thing exept for the users folder backed up. If you keep a clean root backup you're basically bullet proof to viruses and hacks.
 
funkychunkz said:
If you see yourself installing things like what you had ( and I'm guessing messed up your system) keep a backup of a working system folder, and everytime you up update your OS make a fresh backup. I keep one so I might not have to re-install.

It's most useful to keep /system but /library can go bad as well. I keep every thing exept for the users folder backed up. If you keep a clean root backup you're basically bullet proof to viruses and hacks.
Click to expand...
...and shotty freeware installations? :p

Thanks for the advice, definitely something I need to make a habit of doing.
 
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