The application Finder.app can't be opened.

I just saw this error for the first time on a colleague's computer, an iMac running 10.6.3. Deleting the preference files mentioned didn't help. The terminal command to rebuild the launch services didn't work either. (As printed in the CNET article it doesn't work, there must be a syntax error in it). I couldn't do any Terminal commands because I couldn't open Terminal, it wasn't in the Dock and I couldn't go to it because Finder wouldn't open.

What did work finally was I downloaded the 10.6.4 Combo update on my Mac, and installed it onto the other iMac (which was connected to mine in FireWire Target mode) by changing the install location.

Adding to this thread...I too ran into this problem with my Mac Mini. It's been twice that the finder came up with the same 10810 error within the past few weeks. (Strange when you have owned a iMac running Tiger for the past 7 years and nothing like this has ever happened to the iMac. Makes you wonder.)

I forced quit the finder, displaying the error message "can't relaunch finder - error 10810". All my desktop icons disappeared inclusive of both the mac HD and the attached firewire OWC Seagate 7200. However, as soon as I turned the Seagate off (it has it's own on/off switch), the finder magically came back and with the message that I didn't eject the drive properly.

So there is something amiss in the communication of the mac and the external hard drive, but who knows what.

Can you connect the Seagate to your Mac Mini via USB2.0 instead? That may eliminate all your issues. I have a Buffalo drive and I've had:
- several issues while connected via FW800
- only some issues while connected via FW400
- so far no issues while connected via USB2.0

Give it a try and let us know.

Not all the drives have an usb connection…

…that is, anyway, slower than the firewire…

Excuse the lack of any direct solution to this topic - it's just frustrating to see people floundering and pointing the finger at third party devices. It's now over a year since I first had the dreaded 10810 error and despite a few weeks here and there when it seemed to have vanished it now appears to be worse than ever on my Macbook (incidentally - it's never been connected to an external drive).
I have tried all the various different methods of resolving this mentioned here and elsewhere - some have worked briefly, but many have made little difference.
There seems to be enough attention to this problem to warrant it's own web site. Maybe even extending to merchandising opportunities to get the message across - eg. T-shirts with the apple logo and the error message underneath it. It's not a minor issue. The most fundamental operation of a computer is to be able to display the contents of your hard drive. Without finder it's impossible. If they can't fix it - at least put us out of misery. I can cope with the despair - it's the hope that's more frustrating.

Yes, I appreciate the speed difference. However, for Time Machine's hourly incremental backups the speed difference isn't an issue. If you were moving large amounts of data throughout the day, that would be a different story.

I agree about the website. I've been following this problem on various threads for at least a year as well and it seems like there's no solution in sight.

In my case it occasionally happens when trying to copy files to a Samba share on the network using Finder. I've now seen this same problem in SL on three separate MacBook pros at my house 13", 15" 2009 and 15" 2007 so it's unlikely to be hardware related.

As a result of this bug, I'm now using PathFinder (a third party file manager) for all file operations because having to restart and then having to scan the drive for inconsistencies (some always turn up after this bug) is a PITA.

What bugs me most is not that Finder crashes, but that this effectively takes down the whole OS, because now a reboot is required. No you don't lose work, but it's massively frustrating. Apple's lack of response then takes the issue from frustrating to infuriating.

I have found the following has eliminated the problem for me:

disable spotlight <== solved most but not all occurances
disable safari <= make it not executable
disable timemachine <= not an easy task I mounted my drive on another mac and removed all files related to it, horrible program anyway IMO

Now using Opera under these circumstances I have not had any problems, I imagine that FireFox and Chrome will work fine too.

More details: I have a 4TB external that I use for video it goes between my Mac, Linux editing system and Windows XP for some additional post. File sizes on here can rather large some as big as 80G for a clip. To access this in every OS I am forced to use NTFS-3G. If you have the NTFG-3G installed on your mac and a drive mounted whether your saving to it or not, this was the time I most often saw Safari crash irrecoverably, killing it did nothing the process would go away but the window would stay open and it would take finder with it. Since Apple does not officially have any NTFS-3G support at all they are not going to be bothered with this. However requests to fix spotlight go unanswered and it seems to be the biggest culprit. Whenever given the option I have submitted my crash logs but the problem persists. I hope they are working on it and just don't have a solution rather than ignoring all my submissions.

I hope this information is useful to someone.

I found one solution that worked for me, as long as you left Terminal open - it's located here: http://utvv.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-to-fix-application-finder-cant-be.html

1. Open up the Terminal application (use Spotlight if you cannot find it)
2. Type: /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder &
3. Press enter and... You're done! You can close the Terminal

However, once I closed Terminal, Finder disappeared again, so I kept it open long enough to finish what I was doing, then closed and restarted.

The error happened while I was transferring files to a 1TB external firewire hard drive.

Yeas that's exactly what I did when it happened to me…

…and all the external partitions but one disappeared…and at the end the data on one of the disks was lost…

Here's what appears to have worked for me - from this article:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10365239-263.html

"If your drives are attached locally, try powering them down while they're still attached. Listen to them and if there is any reading or writing activity (small grinding or chattering noises) then wait for it to silence before hitting the power. Likewise, unplug ethernet cords and turn off AirPort (via the system menu or the Network system preferences) to cut the connection to networked services."

After I did this, I rebooted the machine. Then I reattached my Airport Extreme which has my Time Machine external hard drive attached. Opened up TM preferences and got it to recognize the external drive and now its doing it's thing - backing up! YAY!

I think I'll leave the other two externals (which are attached directly to the iMac) unattached until I can see the TM will continue backing up today on it's own.

Then I'll try reattaching the others (one is for a SuperDuper backup, the other is for "extras" that I want to backup).

I'll y'all are interested, I'll keep you updated.

Just happened again. 😟

This time with an afp share (that is running on snow leopard…actually on a brand new install, done a few days ago and with all the updates…For the sake of clarity, my own install, on the other hand is a couple of year old and was done updating from leopard).

I was just browsing it, nothing special, then all the windows I kept opening from that share simply showed the loading spinning wheel and nothing more. I suspected that it was happening again, I quit the Finder (not via force-quit, but shouldn't change much anyway) and got -10810 again.

I forced the umount of the share (sudo umount -f /Volumes/share) and umount hung too. But the share was actually umounted, according to mount.
No change.

I'll try rebuilding the launchservices database, probably tomorrow (can't reboot now).

Anyway, to open Finder from the Terminal and +keep it open+ after you closed the command line window just detach it:

screen /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder

Of the three Macs that I am presently running 10.6 on, only one has shown the "The application Finder can't be opened. -10810" error.

The Mac I'm having problems with is a Mac Pro, and I have been running 10.6 fine for months and the issue has only started over the last few of weeks. I haven't made any changes to my config that I am aware of. I normally see the issue occur while browsing my OpenSolaris ZFS NAS using SMB. (I'm using Samba on the Solaris end and not CIFS.) The first thing I see is that I try to do something (such as change application associations on a .flv file) on the NAS and the finder locks up with the spinning beach ball. I wait a while for it to recover, which is does not, so I tried restarting the finder. The finder will then simply turn off. I try to start the finder and I receive the above mentioned error.

I have been using a Solaris based NAS with this Mac for months without seeing this issue. Also, I don't always see this issue. Sometimes the Mac will run for days without seeing this issue. At this point my Mac has been running for 7 days without an issue, and I just reproduced. During this 7 day period I used my NAS constantly. Once this issue occurs the only way to start the finder that I have found is to reboot the Mac. I wonder why a reboot resolves the issue??? It's almost like there is some resource that is remaining locked even through I killed the Finder process, and the reboot naturally unlocks the resource. I would be nice to have a workaround that allows you to clear this without restarting the computer.

Jack,

Thank you for that very useful tip with the screen command. It does provide a way to keep running without having to reboot!

Thanks!

You're welcome.
Although a permanent solution would be better, of course…