VrijVlinder

Q: Finder freezes maverick must restart over and over

Since the upgrade to maverick my finder and every thing else will freeze and the whirligig wont stop turning .

I am at my wits end having to force restart every five minutes. I use this for work and I can't afford to waste so much time rebooting that takes 5 minutes.

The force quit window also freezes so nothing gets quit and have to restart.

I don't know if all the restarts is damaging but today I must have 100 times.

 

Does anyone know what to do to fix this? It should not happen. I had to post this using my phone .....

Mac mini, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Nov 4, 2013 6:33 PM

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Q: Finder freezes maverick must restart over and over

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  • Helpful answers

  • by BDAqua,

    BDAqua BDAqua Nov 4, 2013 7:21 PM in response to VrijVlinder
    Level 10 (123,496 points)
    Nov 4, 2013 7:21 PM in response to VrijVlinder

    Hello,

     

    Bootup holding CMD+r, or the Option/alt key to boot from the Restore partition & use Disk Utility from there to Repair the Disk, then Repair Permissions.

     

    If that doesn't help Reinstall the OS.

     

    Or,,,

     

    One way to test is to Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, Test for problem in Safe Mode...

     

    PS. Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive

     

    Reboot, test again.

     

    If it only does it in Regular Boot, then it could be some hardware problem like Video card, (Quartz is turned off in Safe Mode), or Airport, or some USB or Firewire device, or 3rd party add-on, Check System Preferences>Accounts (Users & Groups in later OSX versions)>Login Items window to see if it or something relevant is listed.

     

    Check the System Preferences>Other Row, for 3rd party Pref Panes.

     

    Also look in these if they exist, some are invisible...

     

    /private/var/run/StartupItems

     

    /Library/StartupItems

     

    /System/Library/StartupItems

     

    /System/Library/LaunchDaemons

     

    /Library/LaunchDaemons

  • by VrijVlinder,

    VrijVlinder VrijVlinder Nov 4, 2013 8:30 PM in response to BDAqua
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Nov 4, 2013 8:30 PM in response to BDAqua

    Thanks for the response, I booted in safe and repaired disk it said disk was ok then repaired permissions there were many repaired . Finished restarted , it took the same long time. Only this time it did not load all my last apps that were on however it did show it logged the force quit. But it did not force quit anything I had to force shut down.

     

    I used mac keeper to clean out useless files even and according to it my system is running great. I don't know how to re install the same system , it takes me to the App Store and tells me it is installed and can't click anything .

     

    I cleaned the pref pain from stuff not in use and the log in items are the barebones. However I am not sure which files to remove . I have a Mac keyboard and a Microsoft mouse and it is hooked to a Samsung display, have been using the same set up for 6 years. No problem until now.

     

    The most disturbing thing is not to be able to force quit anything or relaunch finder. No changes after the first fix option :(

  • by Alvarofromse,

    Alvarofromse Alvarofromse Nov 5, 2013 5:37 AM in response to VrijVlinder
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 5, 2013 5:37 AM in response to VrijVlinder

    Do you have Google Drive installed?

  • by VrijVlinder,

    VrijVlinder VrijVlinder Nov 5, 2013 7:28 AM in response to Alvarofromse
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Nov 5, 2013 7:28 AM in response to Alvarofromse

    No I don't think I do what is it? Does it come with google browser or google earth?

  • by VrijVlinder,

    VrijVlinder VrijVlinder Nov 5, 2013 9:29 AM in response to BDAqua
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Nov 5, 2013 9:29 AM in response to BDAqua

    I re installed the os but the finder still freezes.although it seems to recover faster but I still can't force quit . I do not have google drive . Any other suggestions ? I need to get to work ,this is a real nightmare that I have only experienced using a windows machine :(

  • by BDAqua,

    BDAqua BDAqua Nov 5, 2013 12:26 PM in response to VrijVlinder
    Level 10 (123,496 points)
    Nov 5, 2013 12:26 PM in response to VrijVlinder

    Open Console in Applications>Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when this happens.

     

    See if the Disk is issuing any S.M.A.R.T errors in Disk Utility...

     

    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH7029

     

     

    Open Activity Monitor in Applications>Utilities, select All Processes & sort on CPU%, any indications there?

     

    How much free RAM & free Disk space do you have also, click on the Memory & Disk Usage Tabs.

     

    Open Console in Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when this happens.

     

    In the Memory tab of Activity Monitor, are there a lot of Pageouts?

    AMPageouts.gif

  • by VrijVlinder,

    VrijVlinder VrijVlinder Nov 5, 2013 4:22 PM in response to BDAqua
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Nov 5, 2013 4:22 PM in response to BDAqua

    Well , I was able to find some crash logs and was posting the results here and reading the activity monitor when the problem happened again everything failed to respond and I had to force shut down again. I am writing on my phone.

     

    There were no smart errors from what I saw , I have 165 gigs of available disk space and 4g RAM .

    This computer was able to run multiple programs at once. I never had any problems like this before.

    All this started right after the upgrade.

     

    It must be some bug. Finder freezing amounts to crashing. It should not happen. The force quit window freezes , how to force quit if even cmd option shift escape don't wit either ?

     

    I will try to post the crash log if I can get that far again. Btw I did not see any dropped page or anything like that when I had the activity monitor on.

  • by Ladiv,

    Ladiv Ladiv Nov 10, 2013 1:38 PM in response to VrijVlinder
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Nov 10, 2013 1:38 PM in response to VrijVlinder

    Has anyone found a solution yet?  All of my media files are connected to my Mini and since the update, if I am lucky I can use one file at a time - after that it freezes and I have to do a hard restart every time.  I'm thinking of going back to the old OS. 

  • by VrijVlinder,

    VrijVlinder VrijVlinder Nov 10, 2013 1:58 PM in response to Ladiv
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Nov 10, 2013 1:58 PM in response to Ladiv

    No solution if it is not tied to using google drive which has been fixed by google anyway. I am going to restore all with my previous system using my Timemachine as soon as I get home.

     

    I recommend you do the same. This version is not stable at all. To restore to previous turn of machine and restart using comand r  press until apple logo shows.

     

    Select restore from timemachine. That is all. It would be great if they they come up with a fix but it will be while .

     

    Some have found fixes by dumping the preferences .plist files inside User/you/Library/Preferences

     

    but you will lose all your settings and Safari won't save favicons without previous version prefs.

     

    It is a real catastrophe in my opinion.

  • by VrijVlinder,Solvedanswer

    VrijVlinder VrijVlinder Nov 18, 2013 8:14 PM in response to Ladiv
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Nov 18, 2013 8:14 PM in response to Ladiv

    I have found a solution !!  And proof that there is some bug in this system which affects many people not just with google drive and other apps but with every aspect of how the mac should work but does not on Mavericks .

     

    I had to fly back home from my business trip to restore my mac mini to how it was before. $400 extra dollars I would have saved had I not upgraded...

     

    Moral to this story is, if your mac does not stop freezing, you must restore it to your previous system. That will fix it.

     

    I restored mine and it has been running for 8 hours without one single freeze. My mail works again.

     

    Try to save as much new work you may have collected since you backed up . Try to upload it to some cloud to save it.

     

    Turn off your machine. Press Command and R at the same time and press the on button until you see the light come on, keep pressing command R until you see the grey apple then release and wait for the screen for the Disk utility.

     

    Connect your device like a Time machine to your computer and select restore from Time machine.

     

    It will take about 3 hours, but it is less time than what I spent trying to fix it with Mavericks.

  • by gregsta82,

    gregsta82 gregsta82 Jul 15, 2014 11:13 PM in response to VrijVlinder
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 15, 2014 11:13 PM in response to VrijVlinder

    I  had this issue for months, was really annoying having to reboot 3+ times per day. After days trawling through blogs, forums and system logs and trying a bunch of different suggest solutions (clean up fonts, change sleep settings, stop using Safari etc) I stumbled across a post somewhere that suggested switching on time zone support in Calendar. I remember seeing a system log entry about Calendar around time time of some of my crashes so I gave this a go and haven't had a problem since.

     

    I can't find the original post where I found that but here are instructions for timezone support:

     

    iCloud: Change your calendar’s time zone

  • by andynighting,

    andynighting andynighting Sep 2, 2016 3:39 AM in response to VrijVlinder
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 2, 2016 3:39 AM in response to VrijVlinder

    Another way is to install another app to do the job of finder. Commander one is pretty good

     

    https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/commander-one-free-dual-pane/id1035236694?mt=12