The application Finder.app can't be opened.

Same issue here.

I was stuck in Safari and could not switch apps, or restart any active process.

However, Expose in the Dock correctly showed open app windows and I was able to use the dock to quit apps. Their status was not updated in the dock and eventually everything locked up. At that point the only thing that fixed it was to hard boot the machine.

I don't consider Leopard to be a production OS. Far too many critical issues. While the update has seemed to fix some issues, new issues now seem to be plaguing my system.

I'm having the same issues since this morning; when I hooked up and external HD the Finder dissapeared and hasn't restarted since (10810 error).

Tried everything from reinstalling 10.6.1 (manually downloaded the software update and started it trough spotlight), reparing disk permissions, resetting god knows what, deleting plist files.. but the Finder just won't work.

(The funny thing is that I would have thought it to be a bigger issue; no Finder, but with a lot of work-arounds I'm getting around pretty well)

I'm going to reinstall Snow Leopard tonight, and hope that helps..

Same here, was using a USB ext HD and got this error when trying to relaunch Finder

[the application Finder.app can't be opened -10810]

Btw; what is the best way to tell Apple's Tech Support directly about this problem?

If you want to waste a half hour and spend a lot of money on your phone, talk to Applecare like I did for 30 minutes. Applecare used to be useful but now that they seem to have switched their call centre from Ireland to Mumbai it is a waste of space (see the film Slumdog Millionaire to see how these call centres work). You get the feeling that they are just reading off a list and if they cannot find it, they lose interest. It is now very difficult to get switched up to the level 2 techies either in Ireland or the Netherlands. This 10810 error is driving me up the wall.

Wilson

happening to me too. in my case, i had done a "quick look" on an item on USB thumb drive. i then copied the contents of the drive to a new folder and deleted the items on the drive. tried to empty the trash, but it wouldn't empty the file i "quick looked" so i tried to quick look another file. no luck. tried to empty the trash again and finder beachballed. tried to force quit finder and got the error. other apps launch and quit fine (safari for example, also terminal, etc) but i can't save anything. that's the problem since i put the USB drive in in the first place to save the two hours of photo editing i had been doing. photoshop was fine until i tried to save the 11 files i had been working on. now that is locked up too.
ugg.
i tried all the suggestions listed here. couldn't unmount the USB drive from terminal. couldn't restart finder from terminal. haven't done a powered restart yet, since then i will surely lose all my work... but not sure what else to do.
in this case the problem is because Quick Look doesn't "release" files after you look at them. it keeps them in memory until you look at the next one i guess. regardless, if you try to delete the last file you quick looked, you're screwed.

Where are all our mega-posters with their snappy cures and ever loyal defence of all things Apple? Do I hear a deathly hush? Is there no cure until the next but 15th upgrade of 10.6? After all it only took Apple 2 years to semi-cure the connection timeout issue, which of course never existed and if it did, was down to our routers/set up/the colour of our eyes etc.

Frustrated - Wilson

I'm getting similar trouble. Had the 10810 error message the other day. Since then have had terrible trouble whilst using Illustrator (that's all I've been doing, I'm not singling that out). Went to eject FW external HDD and Finder locks up, spinning ball, can't shut down. Can access other apps so far... tried shutting down from Terminal but it does nothing. Only way to shutdown is holding down power button.

This is a recent Snow Leopard upgrade (on a MacPro) and is a pain in the butt. Will trying running without external HDD, see if it helps.

Having this same problem as well. I get the impression that it might have something to do with an old version of Expandrive that isn't compatible with Snow Leopard. Logging out and in seems to fix the problem temporarily...

I've filed an apple bugreporter issue on this, bug # 7256664, with a link to this discussion. Hopefully its already been reported and is a known issue.

Asylum, did u ever get this fixed? this sounds more like my problem than the other posts. finder won't open and desktop is wiped, but i don't get any error messages. i can still open my files from within the apps, but when i click the finder it just does nothing. did you ever figure this out? i'm dying...

Since un-hooking my external FW HDD, I haven't been affected by this problem. Anyone else reporting the same??

Yes exactly the same. Unhook FW Freecom Datatank or FW Iomega eGo and no 10810 errors or crashes. Timecapsule connected via Ethernet still OK but as my images are my livelihood, I like to run two back-ups a day to separate external HD's with Chronosync. An external HD can be connected via FW or USB (does not make any difference) as long as you do not let your Mac go to sleep. It seems as if it is sleep/wake that does not work properly. I think it is the same issue that causes iTunes to lose connection with Airport Express speakers (actually optical output to DAC) as iTunes is waking before the network connection to the AE. You can reconnect immediately afterwards with no problems.

Wilson

I had this 10810 error with 10.6.1 (Finder wouldn't start, etc...). I called Apple Support and tried many different things (like deleting the com.apple.finder.plist file and even the ~/Library/Preferences directory). It just caused other problems. The weird thing in my case was only 1 userid on my Mac was affected. All other userids were fine. Apple Support eventually told me to create a new userid and move certain files/folders to that user's home folder. I did not want to go through that. Ultimately what worked was to re-install Snow leopard from the install disc (which means going back to 10.6). So far so good.

Yeah, it definitely seems related to external drives. I only have the issue when working with several external drives connected. The finder will just randomly start spinning the wheel. I've already corrupted one drive with it happening while data was being written. Turning off the drives or disconnecting them will instantly make the Finder responsive again. I never had any problems with any of these drives before Snow Leopard.