Finder crashes when I open a folder

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Level 1

29 points

Finder crashes when I open a folder

The Finder is crashing occasionally when I open folders. I haven't found any pattern to it, but I when double click a folder, occassionally the whole desktop just goes away. Then the desktop appears and all the previous folders are open, not the folder that caused the crash though.

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Oct 1, 2010 10:22 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

macjack

Level 10

111,204 points

Oct 1, 2010 10:24 AM in response to Matt Brown3

Go to Users/yourname/Library/Preferences and trash these two files:
com.apple.finder.plist
com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

Then, restart.
(You will have to reset a few finder prefs the way you like them.)
Let us know. I realize since it happens infrequently it may take a while to tell...

-mj

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Answer 2

thomas_r.

Level 7

32,001 points

Oct 1, 2010 12:48 PM in response to Matt Brown3

In addition to macjack's advice, I would also advise [repairing the hard drive with Disk Utility|http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417]. If any problems are found and unable to be repaired, you can try [DiskWarrior|http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html] or [TechTool Pro|http://www.micromat.com>.

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Answer 3

cybrdr

Level 1

4 points

Oct 8, 2010 11:58 PM in response to Matt Brown3

See this post which fixed also fixes the "opening a folder" problem. Trashing the com.apple.finder.plist file and restarting was not enough for me. Running DiskWarrior 4.2 also did not help.

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"RE: 10.6.4 makes applications crash after upgrade (June 17, 2010) by captainsaltydog

After installing the 10.6.4 update last night I was one of the people who experienced my computer getting hung up constantly. I do a lot of work on photos and as soon as I would start doing something the computer would freeze up and could not be shut down or restarted. I had tried re-downloading the update which seemed to work for all of about two minutes before Mail froze up and the computer again had to be re-booted. Clicking the finder icon in the dock gave me a finder error - which led Apple to believe the issue was with a plist file or a bad cache.

I got through to Apple this evening and they had me do the following (which fixed my problem):

Start up in safe mode (holding the shift key while powering up)

Move the finder plist file to the desktop. It was located in my home folder - library - preferences (named com.apple.finder.plist)

Empty the caches completely by dragging the 3 cache folders to the trash. Here is where they were:

home folder - library - caches
macintosh HD - library - caches
macintosh HD - system - library - caches

Next restart in normal mode and empty the trash. If you no longer experience your system hanging up, move the finder plist file from your desktop to the trash and empty again.

I hope someone else finds this helpful. I was so happy I did not have to go through a re-install of OSX that I was motivated to make my first post here tonight!"
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I hope it does the trick for you... This is my first post as well :^)

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