Finder Windows Will Not Close

Question

Level 1

37 points

Finder Windows Will Not Close

I have strange behaviour appearing since I have been using Snow Leopard, and it manifests itself on at least three different Macs. I cannot find any references to it, but I intermittently have Finder windows that stay open (I cannot close them, either with the button, the Close Window command or the command-W key combination). If I log out and in again, I am able to close them, and I am also able to do it by force-quitting Finder (though once that managed to fail to restart the Finder at all, so I don't like doing that - I then started to just leave the "extra" windows open - I don't think I have ever ended up with more than two "stuck" windows). It doesn't happen to all windows, only some of them, and I have not yet been able to work out why they get "stuck". I run my Finder with the sidebar turned off, but sometimes turn it on temporarily using the keyboard to go to another computer (on our "network" of connected Macs at home). I tend to have several Finder windows open at once, using command double click to open additional ones. I am not sure, but I think the windows may get stuck when I command click the sidebar to open Finder windows showing details of other computers. No matter where I navigate to in the window once it is open, using the sidebar or not, I still cannot close it. When I try to close it, I can see the close button flash in the top left-hand corner of the window, but it doesn't close. The Close command on the menus is visible (not greyed-out) but also just makes the corner flash before failing to close the window.

Does anyone know how to shut the windows down without force-quitting the Finder? Has anyone else got similar behaviour? It is the way I use the Finder? Has anyone reported this? I could not find any similar mentions of this on the discussion forums or in any of the Support section of the Apple site.

MacBook Pro (2010 version), Mac OS X (10.6.4), Other Macs on 10.6 including two MacBooks and two Mac Minis

Posted on Jun 20, 2010 1:53 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Jun 20, 2010 2:20 PM in response to Nic D

I would try deleting the /Home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist file then relaunching the Finder. If that doesn't help then locate and delete:

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist
/Home/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.windowserver.03A502E8-AFC9-5A89-BCEE- 9F779EB89F28.plist

Note that the hex numbers you see will be different from the one listed above. Again, relaunch the Finder.

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Answer 2

JaimieV

Level 2

490 points

Jun 20, 2010 2:35 PM in response to Nic D

If it does indeed happen when you click on other computers, are those other computers Windows?

Sometimes Finder will wait and wait and wait and wait for a Windows networking response that never comes.

Have you allowed say five minutes for the window to come back under your control?

(I saw this a lot in Leopard, but much less in SL - but I know other people who have seen it more in SL, so I don't know what the norm might be!)

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Answer 3

Nic D Author

Level 1

37 points

Jun 20, 2010 9:45 PM in response to JaimieV

Thanks for the responses. All the computers on the network are Macs. There are no Windows machines at all.
When I say it has occurred on three different Macs, that means it has happened when using three different Macs rather than just accessing three different Macs over the network (so it means that three different Macs must have corrupted preferences, if this is the case).
I'll try deleting the preferences and see if it occurs again.

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Answer 4

Nic D Author

Level 1

37 points

Jun 21, 2010 7:08 AM in response to Nic D

OK, I have tried deleting the plists suggested, which actually doesn't fix it. I have also managed to find a process that seems to "break" it on Snow Leopard. The process is as follows:
• Have your Finder windows set up so that the sidebar is not shown.
• With one Finder window active, press command altS to open the side bar.
• Command-click on a different computer on the list (in my trial, this was a different Mac also running Snow Leopard with sharing active and me accessing it as a logged-in user with the login details already present in my Keychain) and it opens a new window with that Finder selection with the sidebar active.
• In that new window, press command altS to close the sidebar.
• Click on the "original" window to make it active.
• Press command altS to close the sidebar.
• Click back on the "new" Finder window and double click on the user folder that you are logged in as.
• Double-click on a folder within this.
Sometimes when I do this, the Finder will appear to crash out and restart (at least all the windows disappear and re-appear), and other times, this "new" window will now not close at all without restarting the Finder.

It seems a bit of a long way around, but since I don't like the sidebar cluttering up the real estate on my desktop, and I want separate windows open to copy things between different Macs in my house, I tend to do this sequence a lot, and hadn't realised this was causing the Finder windows to "stick".

Can anyone else replicate this with Snow Leopard? In other words, is it something specific about the set-up in my house, or is it more generic? I have done this with three Macs in my house, but I am not sure if it is something about my home network or something else about how I have them set up that is causing it.

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