The application Finder.app can't be opened.

Hi,
I am not sure weather this is the correct location or not but I found a way to restart the Finder without rebooting!
*Simply start a Terminal kill all the running Finder processes and restart Finder.*
Et Voilà Finder is back up and running.
Hope that works for you too!?
So long ishy

I see this also and I have an external 2GB Fantom Firewire 800 drive. I turned it off and Finder returned to life.
But in general, I often see Finder (or PathFinder) take up to 20 seconds to open a directory, or to switch disks, even to my internal drives on a MacPro. Something is very rotten.

The second issue of slow folder access may be unrelated to 10810. SL seems to be very sensitive to/prone to cluttered caches. You can either use freeware Onyx (SL version 2.1.2) or the commercial utility, Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner, which some claim is more sophisticated. If you are getting a lot of spinning beachballs of doom, that may well help. Neither of these utilities does anything for 10810.

Wilson

I have been experiencing this problem for several weeks (months?) now on my Mac Mini.

I had other problems, too:

1. Extremely slow bootup -- the gray screen lasts forever
2. Upon login, extremely slow startup of applications
3. Mail would suddenly freeze and I would have to force quit
4. Quite often, I would get the beachball on the system UI bar. Preferences would also get the beachball.
5. Virtually everytime I would try shutting down & the system would not shut down. Quite often, I would be told that Finder prevented the shutdown & then Finder would give the -10810 error.
6. Other times, the whole system would just freeze up while I was in the middle of something and I would have to power off with the power button.

After browsing this thread plus others, I decided to try a few things:

I adjusted the spotlight settings to make my time machine volume private. No improvement.
I turned off time machine. No improvement.
I repaired disk permissions. I verified the disk. No improvement.
I installed and used Onyx and cleaned every cache that Onyx would let me clean. I uninstalled Microsoft Office 2008. No improvement.
I reinstalled Snow Leopard & then updated to the 10.6.1 update. No improvement. (I did not wipe the disk clean, though, just re-installed the OS).

After viewing this thread, I wondered if any of my external devices may be causing the problem. I normally keep my iPod shuffle dock plugged in, but I don't always have the shuffle docked. So I thought ... I wonder if it's the shuffle?

With the mac mini turned off, I docked my iPod Shuffle. Then, I powered on the Mac Mini. Voila! All six of the above issues disappeared. It has been 2 days and I have not gotten the -10810 error yet.

Yes, I do use the eject feature before removing my shuffle from the dock. Could there have been a time where I undocked the shuffle before ejecting? Well, maybe, but I don't think so. I am more inclined to think that I had shutdown the system with the iPod Shuffle still in the dock. Then, removed the shuffle after the system was shut down. I wonder if I had a bad shutdown sequence? Or maybe you're not supposed to undock without ejecting even after shutdown? Whatever happened with my shuffle, I sure do think Snow Leopard should be more robust.

I'm not calling this a fix for -10810, per se, since I did have other issues....but I thought I'd share this in case someone else could benefit.

I have this issue too.
It started when I tried to connect to an external (on local network) Maxtor backup drive.

Message was edited by: ameeps

The solution to this problem has been posted on this blog:
http://utvv.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-to-fix-application-finder-cant-be.html

It is similar to what has been suggested by others.
Hope this helps!


PS: yes, I also have experienced this problem.

The problem with the terminal solutions is twofold. Firstly unless you very quickly eject the external memory or storage device that is triggering the 10810, Finder will soon crash again. Secondly unless you have a copy of Terminal on your dock, you may find it impossible to access. Spotlight often is crashed as well as Finder (hardly surprising, given how linked they are). The suggested solution is basically the same as the Finder killall solution. I would not hold your breath for a resolution of this issue in 10.6.3, as I am told it is not listed on the fixes.

Wilson

Message was edited by: WilsonLaidlaw

I'd just like to add my horror story to the growing list here:

My external HDD, which has been exclusively my Time Machine backup, has suddenly started annihilating Finder, to put it lightly. Most often, Finder refuses to recognize that the HDD is even connected. Disk Utility doesn't even recognize it's connected. After much disconnecting and reconnecting, I get my MBP to mount the drive, though it doesn't automatically get recognized as a Time Machine drive as it should - it takes about 20 seconds before Time Machine will recognize it. Then, once I start the backup, it will be "Calculating Changes..." for quite awhile, and then the "safe unmounting" message pops up, indicating the drive somehow unmounted itself in the middle of backing up, though it still appears to be mounted according to Finder. Then, Finder freezes completely, and I have to Relaunch. But Finder doesn't relaunch, so I click the dock icon and I get the lovely -108100. So, I tried to do a system restart, after manually quitting all my applications. One problem: with Finder in that zombie state and unable to re-open, apparently, none of my Apple apps I have running can save my data before quitting, forcing me to Force Quit them just to exit out of them, as they hung indefinitely. I then attempted the system restart, and it WOULDN'T shut down. So, I had to resort to a hard shut down, which is really unfortunate. Oddly enough, the drive was backing up fine when I brought it and my MBP to the Apple Store to get them looked at when the drive was at first only not being recognized by SL. I wonder if it has something to do with power supply?

Also, granted, this is a CHEAP, low-end HDD, by a brand most people probably have never heard of with good reason (Fantom Drives). That said, this drive had no problems with Leopard and Time Machine whatsoever, even being a crappy drive. This is definitely a SL issue, and Apple needs to stop playing spin doctor on our complaints.

I'm now debating whether I should try getting a new HDD, or if new hardware will make absolutely no difference in this issue.

Same problem I've had since moving to 10.6. I've resigned myself to just unplugging my external TM drive (I can't eject it once the problem takes hold), no activity is occurring on it anyway so it's unlikely to make any damage to the directory worse. Once drive is unplugged, Finder is restored, I get the eject error, I plug the drive back in, back-ups resume for awhile (from hours to days) until the problem recurs.

On the suggestion of an earlier post, I opened a support ticket using this link:

http://www.apple.com/support/expert/

I described the problem and +referenced this discussion+; I got a call back as promised. First tech was wondering about spotlight interference--I told him no disk activity was occurring. Problem got escalated immediately to a sr. tech. Neither of them claimed familiarity with this problem nor this discussion thread but they apparently looked it over briefly during my call. They didn't spend much time on possible solutions nor suggest a system reinstall (maybe they knew it was a lost cause??) The sr. tech said he would immediately forward the issue to engineering and said once enough evidence of a problem was amassed, a solution would be attempted by them. I urge anyone who hasn't done so to open a support request, if you can, to build some critical mass and get the "Big Brains" to work on it; suggest reporting your experience back to the thread. My call took about 6 minutes, not a big time investment.

I got the same issue as everyone else when I opened a folder on my Iomega 750gb FW800 drive. I had the beachball/pizza/whatever for sometime so I force quitted finder. then I got the error. Tried a few things mentioned above, but without any luck. so I logged out and I got a blue screen with the cursor, but nothing else.

after I turned it off with the power button down I removed the power and battery for a few minutes before restarting. now I've restarted and everything seems back to normal. It took a little longer than usual to start up, but all ok...

Gareth,
Please raise a support ticket for this with Apple. Unless we get thousands of tickets, resolution of this issue will not be a priority. You will most likely find this issue reoccurs and always, at the time of maximum inconvenience.

Wilson

Had a perfect and stable working SL 10.6.2.. Upgraded manually to latest Firefox version.

Update stopped before finishing, nothing happened, dock was dead ("Finder.app can´t be opened - 10810").

After a long search the forums deleted "com.apple.LaunchServices.plist" and "com.apple.LaunchServices.QuarantineEvents" in /username/Library/Preferences/ folder.

Everything worked well again. After 3 days tried another Firefox update. Same problem, same solution after deleting Launch services.

Seems for me that firefox crashes it.

I avoid installing firefox and wait what happens. Am I wrong?

Andy

Ewwwww 22 pages, don't fancy reading all that. However I would like to add my bit here.

I've got the same problem here, but for me it's not got anything to do with external drives. My problem appears when mounting my backup drive (Time Machine), which is internal (Time Capsule died on me, so I used the disk & installed it in my Pro).

I disabled Time Machine & have not had any more lock-ups or backups for the last few days, Until now.

My latest crash (-10810), just 2 mins ago was when I mounted a dmg. I tried to install the software & ye olde password box appeared for root privs, What no keyboard!!! Clicked on finder & the dreaded "The application finder can't be opened. -10810" error appeared!

I've tried most of the solutions here & none have worked.

What a pain, c'mon apple get it sorted.

Well had enough, was just getting worse.

Popped in my Snow Leopard disc.
Installed, tested... no more errors
Installed MacOSXUpdCombo10.6.2, tested... no more errors
Mounted a few disks... no more errors
Ran a full backup and finally no more errors.

Wasted 2 hours of my life tonight, but hopefully it's the end of the crashes.

Andy wrote: "I'm now debating whether I should try getting a new HDD, or if new hardware will make absolutely no difference in this issue. "

As long as you are staying with 10.6, I wouldn't bother upgrading unless you have other common reasons for getting a better quality drive. That is, if you have critical data you must have, it just makes sense to use a quality hard drive to store it on, right?

BTW, just to help yourself and those responding to any future questions or problems you may have: you should go to "My Settings" and enter your Mac's type/model, Processor info, amount of RAM and of course what version of OS X you're running.


Good luck.