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The application Finder.app can't be opened.

I upgraded to Snow Leopard yesterday, and I'm having a lot of troubles, Finde, Time Machine and Disk Utility being the most annoying of them. I don't really know which one of them is making the others unstable / crash but well that's starting to be very irritating, now when I try to start the Finder I get this :

*The application Finder.app can't be opened.*
-10810

Restarting the Computer ( Mac Book Pro Uni ) usually fix that, but it's the second time that it's crashing a 220 go files package copy. I ended up doing it with rsync, the copy is still going on ( it will take a long time ) but I'm left with a Zombie Computer where I can't open a finder, and every Application that use it to open some file is crashing itself.

Is there a way to manually relaunch it ( I don't want to reboot, my computer is stuck backing up a lot of files ) ? I tried Sudo Launch the Finder from /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS with no luck, any help would be appreciated.

KS

Message was edited by: Kel Solaar

Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Aug 30, 2009 12:35 PM

Reply
696 replies

Feb 15, 2010 11:09 PM in response to Steve Chen1

Well, there are certainly multiple circumstances with trigger the Finder error. Most of those have to do with accessing external drives (even flash drives) and I think there's one report of it happening when someone tried to access a partition of the same drive. The sleep / no sleep issue may be something different - but I think that's also a "drive access" when waking from sleep. That's the problem: there's no other commonality - considering that the great majority of installations of Snow Leopard do not have this problem.

Feb 17, 2010 7:26 AM in response to Kel Solaar

Well, I'm certainly glad that I'm not alone. I have a 320GB USB hard-drive connected to my 1TB Time Capsule, and after a few days, if I attempt to access it through Finder, everything stalls up, I get the spinning beach ball of death, and Finder eventually crashes. Attempting to reopen Finder always results in the typical -10810 error.

I haven't read all 30 pages of this thread, but I'm assuming no permanent fix has been found yet? Maybe 10.6.3?

Feb 17, 2010 8:28 AM in response to rjeffords

I've had similar problems and posted on this thread about them. I'm using TimeMachine instead of Time Capsule and had exactly the same problems-- after a few days of TM working, I'd get locking up, etc. On the advice of a previous poster, I turned off the computer and hard drive sleep (display sleep is OK), and I haven't had a single problem in over what seems like over a month.

This solution has worked around the problem for me, you might give it a try until a real fix is released. Please consider opening a support ticket with Apple, several posters have done so and there are links and how to's in this thread. That will hopefully bring the problem to the forefront so Apple will fix it properly.

Feb 17, 2010 6:34 PM in response to rjeffords

Hello rjeffords and welcome to the Lost Colony of Error 10810 victims, outcasts and abandoned Children of Mac.

Yes, your problem is what we're here about. If it's any help, MacFixit (on CNN) has a write up on this issue here: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10365239-263.html

Others might want to review the proposed remedies in that article since it's the only place I know where there's an actual list of things to try.

I guess the rumor I read saying that Apple would release 10.6.3 today (Wed., 2-17-10) isn't true. I've seen no mention of another developers build of that release so it looks like everyone's in for another indefinite period under the Cone of Silence.

Feb 17, 2010 11:45 PM in response to macnoel

I am going to have to call up my Mac Deep Throat beta tester, tell her she's useless and that I will have to find a new spy - WHERE"S 10.6.3?

Seriously, the various "cures" listed in C-Net can give some short term relief (seems to last about 7 to 10 days), especially rebuilding launch services with ONYX. The important ones they did not mention is disabling Spotlight indexing on any external storage device or even disabling all indexing. If you turn off Spotlight in Terminal, please note it will spring to life again after a restart so you need to turn it off again.

Wilson

Feb 18, 2010 1:26 AM in response to WilsonLaidlaw

Wilson wrote: " WHERE"S 10.6.3?"

I concur. I've back-checked and MacInsider was reporting on the release of the developer's copy of 10.6.3 on Dec. 8th. They issued another prediction of imminent release of the "public beta" later in December. NOTHING since then.

This of course makes it possible that there was no release of any kind. If there was one, we can assume there must be continuing problems for there to be such a "lag time" between any beta and the official public release.

And thanks for adding the info about disabling indexing. I didn't think to mention that the C-Net list was not "comprehensive." I just wanted to make others aware that there was a one-stop way to get a look at a number of possible workarounds for error 10810.

Feb 19, 2010 2:50 PM in response to Kel Solaar

I have been getting this error for the past few weeks. It happens just about every time send something to the trash from a shared server. I end up having to force quit Finder, and then I get the 10810 error upon relaunch. I have tried all of the fixes for it, and I am still having no luck.

Right now, all I am looking for is a way to restart my machine without finder that doesn't include holding down the power button for 10 seconds. I have tried the sudo shutdown commands from terminal, and that just takes me to the blue screen that never goes away.

Any suggestions?

Feb 22, 2010 12:23 PM in response to Milesdavisiv

Same Problem with a MacBook Pro after upgrading to Snow Leopard. After the MacBook has been asleep we get the 10810 error trying to access a shared network drive. This has never been a problem until the Snow Leopard update, which has me concerned because I am currently tasked with upgrading the entire office to Snow Leopard. I ma very disappointed that Apple does not appear to be taking this issue to seriously. Sure do wish I had heard of this problem before we began the upgrade.

Feb 22, 2010 11:39 PM in response to Renegade7077

Hello Renegade,
Since you seem to be saying there's no way to halt or roll back your office-wide upgrade, I think it would help if you report on the outcome vis a vis the occurrence of error 10810 in any of the upgraded Macs. There would seem to be (and hopefully is) small chance that those machines would "automatically" experience this problem.

Despite the length and size of this thread on the topic, there must be very few machines in the total installed base having this problem. After all, one of the reasons you didn't find out about this problem is that this thread is the primary place where this problem has been reported. Consider too that this thread began Aug. 30, 2009 and has grown slowly in terms of added reports.

It's perverse to say but it might have been better if this problem had affected a much larger part of those installing 10.6.

Mar 2, 2010 11:40 AM in response to Kel Solaar

It seems to me that what's happening is that what's happening is that the system is not able to find your user ID in the directory service. On my machine, if I list files in the terminal, it gives the numerical uids rather than my short user name, which says to me the service looking up my id can't figure out who I am. This means that Finder won't relaunch and that sudo won't work.

The application Finder.app can't be opened.

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