Finder not responding?

Oh by the way, I solved my problem! It was TimeMachine who systematically failed to do the backups over the air on my TimeCapsule, for whatever reason. This had that huge impact on the Finder on both my MacBook Pro and my iMac.

I disabled TimeMachine backups then reconfigured them.

Problem solved.

I have had terrible problems with Finder going unresponsive, and then it failing to relaunch. This has been accessing various USB flash drives and Firewire external drives. This has been on my main MacPro (2006) and with a Mac Mini set-up as a media centre. Both are running the latest Snow Leopard 10.6.4, though I have had this problem recurring since much earlier in the year when I upgraded from Leopard in the new year. However, I don't think it was immediate, as I though tit was a problem with a particular stick, though then I realised it was a wider problem.
It seems related to the "The application Finder.app can't be opened. -10810" problem - as I've had that too when trying to get the Finder back.
After I do a restart, and check the disk I have to repair it using Disk Utility as 'threads' are missing - presumably because the Finder wigged out half way through doing something. The above also has to be done with the Mac Mini.
Searching the web has some suggestions, but they haven't solved the problem. Apple themselves seem rather quiet about a solution to this quite wide spread problem.

I wanted to add an update to my post above. A couple of weeks ago I applied the Combo 10.6.4 update - hoping this reinstall would fix the problem. Thought it had, as I hadn't had a reoccurrence of it on either my Mac Pro or Mini (it had the Como applied too). However, this morning I put in a 4Gb Verbatim USB Flashdrive - and the next thing Finder is unresponsive. Try a relaunch - fails of course (but one always hopes). Applied the "/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder &" to get things responsive again, but after closing down applications to restart get the 'beachball' and had to hold the power switch to force a shutdown (sudo reboot in Terminal hadn't worked either).

So once more, after fixing the Hard Disk thread errors that result and lost nearly two hours of valuable time, I am back with a working Mac. Please Apple fix this Finder/External Drive issue.

I've had this problem since I got my new iMac in August. Serious problems. I've taken the progressive steps of installing the combo update, then reinstalling Snow Leopard over top, then finally I did total wipe/install.

I have no external disks plugged in, no other startup software, and no weird stuff running. I've repaired permissions and cleaned caches multiple times, manually and with Onyx. All of my software if fully up-to-date and new stuff, no old versions. I've talked to Apple support, and had already done everything they suggested, so the next step is to take it in to the Genius bar, but I'm not sure what they can do.

After I installed from scratch, it's gotten progressively worse. Today I've had to reboot with the powerbutton about every 30 minutes, and I'm not using anything but Firefox OR Chrome (happens with both). I also rarely get the 10810 error now- things just quit working. Sure, I can move windows around, but even if it's not beachballing, I can't open or close things or save or launch anything. I can click on an icon and it'll bounce endlessly, if it does anything at all. I am beyond frustrated, into the angry phase.

I shelled out $2000 for this computer, and having it mysteriously become 90% unresponsive every 30 minutes is not what I paid for.

Message was edited by: D1ll

Message was edited by: D1ll

I'm having the same issues (also documented in another thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12744589#12744589

Getting a lot of the "fseventsd" SLOWDOWN errors.

May be related to backing up to a Network drive attached to my Time Capsule as often (although not always), I can tell that the crash occurred during a TM backup because the TM icon just spins without making any progress beyond what was done at the point of the Finder crash.

This is happening every few days (sometimes daily) and I'm having to do a hard restart every time. Getting REALLY tired of it. Not sure if it's an issue with this particular mac (my Mac Mini) because I rarely ever see the issue on my Macbook (which backs up directly to the TC) or if it's an issue with the Time Capsule itself.

I have noticed that my Time Capsule sometimes loses access to the air disks and printer attached to it and the only solution is a restart.

Just tried something to see if it would be a work-around to the hard restart. Since I'm also having the TC issues, I tried restarting the TC first. After restarting the TC, the Mac Mini Finder/System Preferences were no longer "hung" and everything was accessible!

So for now, whenever I have the "Finder not responding" or Finder error 10810, I'm going to just try using Airport Utility to restart the Time Capsule. Not the perfect "solution", but if it saves me having to do a Hard Restart and reboot to open all of my apps, it's definitely preferrable.

I'd be interested to know if this work-around works for anyone else.

Same general problem here. In my case, it occurs with a firewire-attached drive that I used exclusively for Time Machine backups. Running a Disk Utility repair operation on the drive uncovers no problems, yet the hang eventually reoccurs and can be "fixed" by unplugging the firewire drive.

The only other variable in my situation is that I have the external drive encrypted with PGP WDE. I haven't tried decrypting the drive to see if that fixes the hang.