Finder takes a long time to open certain folders

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Level 1

0 points

Finder takes a long time to open certain folders

Hello all,

I'm experiencing a problem with Lion's Finder which I can't figure out. Spontaneously, Finder will start to produce the spinning dots within Finder, but not display the contents of a folder. I can access the folder fine if I copy and paste it elsewhere though, and it also works fine if I access through Windows using Parallels. The problem appears to just be Finder. Repairing Permissions and Verifying the disk also produce no results. Any ideas?

MacBook Pro 17", Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Dec 14, 2011 4:53 PM

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Answer 1

macjack

Level 10

111,242 points

Dec 14, 2011 6:01 PM in response to leefisher

Go to Finder "Go" menu hold the option key and choose Library. Then go to Preferences trash these files:

com.apple.finder.plist

com.apple.finder.plist.lockfile.

com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

com.apple.sidebars.plist.lockfile

Then, restart, or log out and in again.

(You will have to reset a few finder prefs the way you like them.)

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Answer 2

forappie

Level 1

36 points

Jan 22, 2012 12:57 AM in response to macjack

I am having the same issue, sometimes Finder may not display the folder contents at all and the wheel keeps on spinning in the bottom right corner of the Finder window.

Did the solution above work for others? What usually works for me is relaunching the Finder but I'm concerned this may influence other applications running at the same time.

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Answer 3

macjack

Level 10

111,242 points

Jan 22, 2012 8:44 PM in response to forappie

We don't know because he never posted back... but in any case, it won't hurt.

If you need to keep relaunching Finder, then something is wrong.

The preferences rebuid themselves.

The only downside is a few Finder prefs you may have to reset.

btw - the .lockfiles don't matter because they contain nothing.

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Answer 4

leefisher Author

Level 1

0 points

Jan 23, 2012 1:16 AM in response to macjack

It did work, but I switched to using Path Finder by Cocoatech pretty soon after doing this anyway.

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Answer 5

forappie

Level 1

36 points

Feb 5, 2012 4:48 AM in response to macjack

I deleted the Finder .plist and .lockfiles as suggested. Unfortunately the problem came back today. Odd thing is it doesn't happen to all folders at the same time. I have for example Documents and Downloads folders sharing the same parent folder. One of them is displayed by the Finder normally while the other shows the everlasting spinning wheel at the same time.

The folder below is located within my Documents folder which doesn't display either:

I do notice however, the folder which is displayed correctly initially is not updated when new files are added ...

Back to relaunching the Finder unfortunately until I get some new suggestions ...

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