Spotlight and finder not loading
My Macbook with Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 does not load Spotlight and my Apple menu is incomplete the Finder is not fully loaded either what do I do?
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.2), MacBook Aluminium Unibody 2008
Launch System Preferences from the Apple Menu and click on “Spotlight”
- Click on the “Privacy” tab
- Drag & drop your entire hard drive into this box (or click the “+” plus icon in the corner to manually select your hard drives from a list.)
- This tells Spotlight NOT to index your hard drive.
- Close out of the "Privacy" tab.
- Wait ten seconds and then reopen the "Privacy Tab".
- Hightlight your hard drive in the privacy tab box and remove it with the Delete key or by hitting the “-” button in the lower left corner. Removing items will trigger the MDS and MDWORKER processes to run- and Spotlight will begin to "see" your files.
- The process may take a while and your computer will run more slowly while it is happening. I find it goes faster if I just walk away for a while and let the system devote full resources to the task.
- When finished, whatever items you include and eliminate will be fully indexed.
- BONUS: This is a great way to get Finder to index external hard drives so they are searchable.
Hope that helps.