Finder stuck in crash/relaunch loop

It was triggered for me when moving a mass of complex files from the docs folder to an external networked drive. The desktop contents moving trick looks to have stopped the problem, but, I have compressed the files that triggered the issue - and transferred the compressed files.

This cure removes all the desktop icons by the way - just so you know.

You may need to delete Home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist and Home/Library/Caches/com.apple.finder/ - the entire folder.

Then restart.

When you used Disk Utility did you also repair permissions? If not, then try that. If you still have no success then create a new user account, if you can, and log into that account. See if that fixes the issue. If it does not then try booting into Safe Mode and see if that fixes the issue then boot normally and see if it remains fixed.

If none of the above are helpful then I think you will need to reinstall Lion:

Reinstalling Lion Without the Installer

Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.

When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.

Reinstall Lion: Select Reinstall Lion and click on the Continue button.

Note: You can also re-download the Lion installer by opening the App Store application. Hold down the OPTION key and click on the Purchases icon in the toolbar. You should now see an active Install button to the right of your Lion purchase entry.

So, then, we can conclude there is a problem in the user account rather than with the Lion system. Is that a correct assumption? If so then it will be necessary to determine what's in the user account causing the problem. I would start looking in these places:

Accounts preferences - Login Items

/Library/StartupItems/ - should not be anything in this folder

/Home/Library/Contextual Menu Items/ - should be nothing in this folder

/Home/Library/PreferencePanes/ - third-party items

/Home/Library/LaunchAgents/ - third-party items

If you have Flash installed then uninstall it and/or update it to the current version.

If you have any third-party Finder add-ons uninstall them.

I know you've already solved your problem, but I too had the same issue. After hours of frustration, I finally solved the problem of the looping finder crash for myself.

In a terminal window, I entered these commands exactly as they are shown below, and substituting "username" with whichever account is having the problem (no spaces, for instance, mine was ryanjames):

$ sudo mkdir /Users/username/Documents/tempfolder
$ sudo mv /Users/username/Desktop/* /Users/username/Documents/tempfolder

I found that info here: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060308010111601

I hope this helps to relieve future frustration.