Finder freeze on startup

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Level 1

10 points

Finder freeze on startup

I've been having occasional recurring problems with the Finder freezing during startup. The Mac will boot as usual, than early in the finder startup process, when drives are being mounted and startup applications are being opened, the whole process will freeze, followed by the appearance of a nonstop spinning wait cursor (aka, "spinning wheel of death"). The only way out of this is to 1) force a hard shutdown by holding down the power button for about 15 seconds, and 2) zapping the PRAM immediately when I start up again. (Not zapping the PRAM means I'll get the same problem on the next restart.)

I have a feeling that this is due to one or another drive or USB device that isn't mounting correctly at startup, but I'm not sure. Is there any kind of log file I can look at that could help me diagnose the problem when it happens?

Thanks,
Peter

Mac Pro Quad Core 2.8 (2008/MacPro3,1/Harpertown), Mac OS X (10.5.4), 6 Gb Ram, Windows Vista Ultimate 64/Bootcamp 2.1

Posted on Aug 20, 2008 11:29 AM

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Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Aug 20, 2008 12:04 PM in response to pgwerner

Whatever was happening is now worse, compounded by hard reboots and corrupt directory, filesystem, prefs, journal, and cachs impacted.

The way out is to have a working backup, run Disk Warrior after you delete the cache folders and extensions.mkext, turn off journaling (booted from another drive). Then do a Safe Boot, turn off login items until resolved, and move your ~/Library/Preferences to another location or rename to Preferences.backup. The same may be true for ~/Library/Application Support or other folders. (I would not create a test account or add anything until fixed).

And yes, it could be a USB cable or device. Rull out everything first, then add back until it happens I guess (but don't hard restart, try to launch only the terminal to kill processes, or if you must, Activity Monitor, or, just have the FORCE QUIT window.

Do delete any Finder preference though.

Can't diagnose if it isn't stable enough to work on.

If you don't have an emergency backup or boot drive, create one. Then off load and backup and start with repairs.

When you do have a stable system, create a backup image for safe keeping that you can "drop in" and restore when needed. A basic system will fit in 24GB partition.

You can also - if you install OS X multiple times, use a small 10GB partition on FireWire for even quicker installs once your Restore and drop in the Leopard DVD image there.

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Answer 2

pgwerner Author

Level 1

10 points

Aug 20, 2008 1:50 PM in response to pgwerner

As I said, its only an occasional problem, and following my last pram-zap, everything seems to be running fine. However, if the pattern holds, I won't be surprised if the problem crops up again in the next few weeks. I will run Disk Warrior, though, and see if that helps.

As for avoiding hard restarts when this error comes up, I really wish I could. Once the spinning wait cursor gets going, there seems to be nothing that responds, including command-option-escape, so backing out of this problem with anything other than a hard shutdown simply hasn't been an option.

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Answer 3

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Aug 20, 2008 2:00 PM in response to pgwerner

I am trying to walk you through now how to avoid those hard harsh restarts before they happen, and SuperDuper clone plus Disk Warrior is a good start toward solving that, along with clearing the cache folders where a lot of corrupt files end up being written - because they are updated constantly.

If you watch your home folder Library and Preferences, and some temp folders, you can see files being updated and changed as that happens. SuperDuper skips copying temp and cache files that are best created fresh the first time a system boots from new drive. And best to do a Safe Boot and Repair Permissions once.

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