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Finder keeps freezing at search

Desktop freeze (finder) is caused by the Finder.plist rewriting itself every minute or so. If menu bar is working use the go to option- enter part but not all of the finder.plist location - & you will see that it disappears and reappears.


Posted on Apr 25, 2019 8:58 AM

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15 replies

May 1, 2019 8:54 AM in response to notcloudy

Reboot into Safe Boot mode by pressing and holding the shift key until the (much slower) progress bar appears. When you have signed into your Desktop, click on it, and press shift+command+G to open the Go To Folder dialog. Copy/paste the following into it:


~/Library/Caches


Locate, and move the following folder to the Trash: com.apple.finder


Reboot normally, and empty the Trash. Has your Finder issues been resolved?

May 1, 2019 8:45 AM in response to Eric Root

Off and on it helps - - but it then goes bad again. Just deleted all of the Caches -one of them. One of them has a plist:


com.apple.nsservrescacne.plist that is readable in quick look but not in text.

It may have things in it that are trying to connect to the internet to update to apple - and now that the apple is offline - would like to delete or remove any web tries.


I think some of the jam has to do with last itunes update for snow leopard -

May 13, 2019 8:37 AM in response to VikingOSX

Beeen through this a million times --In the end - its still something is stuck in a never ending loop and it keeps rewriting the finder. You can tell its doing it if you can open activity utility (I keep it in the dock) and you can see the usage going up and down. - even if you can use the desktop (do not move the window or it will freeze up instantly)


May 16, 2019 7:57 AM in response to Eric Root

I am using Snow Leopard and my mac is offline. The freezing actually started when I updated from leopard to Snow leopard in 2009. There is a shutdown log that lists every hard shutdown - always around the 20th and or on Monday.


I have the internet setup (dial-up). In safe mode - apple Iwork and Ilife does not fully load - but amazingly I can use adobe photoshop no problem. There should be no difference between safe and regular startup because I do not have any plugins or startup items. I launch my pen-pad by just launching the actual app - rather than having it auto load.


One of the logs seems to be looking for kext files - I know there was one problem on the last itunes update for Snow Leopard - but there never was a fix.


I have set everything I can find for no auto connect - no auto update - no synchronization.



May 21, 2019 8:17 AM in response to Eric Root

I tried that too - did not work.


Its the aluminum mac pro - and one problem started up in a room the is always cool. It does not play well in winter - but if I do what I can in safe mode for about an hour - then restart regular it may or may not be okay.


The only hardware error - I ran Tech Tools that came with the mac - and it gave me a vram error (safe mode) when I restarted regular - it said vram was okay - but doesn't say if its the video card or ram on main processor board.


In hind site - a better option in 2008 would have been to purchase a new drive (if possible) for failing drive on G4Cube - as that still boots up - and the 3gb that were failing have been subtracted from the drive total. So Sad.

May 31, 2019 7:56 AM in response to Eric Root

Tech tools checks the ram and it is okay.


Everything is okay. As the finder freeze happened from Snow leopard on (based on posts to later versions) it is an apple problem that may have something to do with software update - "clean install".


If apple cant figure out the problem - perhaps all version upgrades should be done the same as OS9 to OS10 where the two versions exists on the same device.



Jun 5, 2019 7:04 AM in response to Eric Root

It depends on if you update to a new release -- or if you delete the drive and do an install - then put your stuff back.


It also depends on what else you are running - your hardware (printers/etc) and if you are on-line 24-7 or like myself can't be bothered - to the point my mac is permanently off-line - and although the cube gets it when I boot it up - (runing panther) the pro does not get it and may be spending a lot of time circling in a never ending loop trying to find a network device.



Finder keeps freezing at search

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