Recurring Finder Problems; & Folders That Appear Empty But Aren't

Try booting into the Safe Mode. Shut down the computer and then power it back up. Immediately after hearing the startup chime, hold down the shift key and continue to hold it until the gray Apple icon and a progress bar appear. The boot up is significantly slower than normal. This will reset some caches, forces a directory check, and disables all startup and login items, among other things. If the system operates normally, there may be 3rd party applications which are causing a problem. Try deleting/disabling the third party applications after a restart. For each disable/delete, you will need to restart if you don't do them all at once.

Safe Mode

Safe Mode - About

I also have several folders that in finder windows appear empty, but actually turn out to have lots of files within.

How do you know that?

Problems such as yours are sometimes caused by files that should belong to you but are locked or have wrong permissions. This procedure will check for such files. It makes no changes and therefore will not, in itself, solve your problem.

First, empty the Trash.

Triple-click the line below to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C):

find ~ $TMPDIR.. \( -flags +sappnd,schg,uappnd,uchg -o ! -user $UID -o ! -perm -600 -o -acl \) 2> /dev/null | wc -l

Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.

Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.

The output of this command, on a line directly below what you entered, will be a number such as "41." Please post it in a reply.

Back up all data. Don't continue unless you're sure you can restore from a backup, even if you're unable to log in.

This procedure will unlock all your user files (not system files) and reset their ownership and access-control lists to the default. If you've set special values for those attributes on any of your files, they will be reverted. In that case, either stop here, or be prepared to recreate the settings if necessary. Do so only after verifying that those settings didn't cause the problem. If none of this is meaningful to you, you don't need to worry about it.

Step 1

If you have more than one user account, and the one in question is not an administrator account, then temporarily promote it to administrator status in the Users & Groups preference pane. To do that, unlock the preference pane using the credentials of an administrator, check the box marked Allow user to administer this computer, then reboot. You can demote the problem account back to standard status when this step has been completed.

Enter the following command in the Terminal window in the same way as before (triple-click, copy, and paste):

{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR.. ; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_ ; sudo chmod -R u+rwX ~ $_ ; chmod -R -N ~ $_ ; } 2> /dev/null

This time you'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before you can run the command. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.

The command will take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear, then quit Terminal.

Step 2 (optional)

Take this step only if you have trouble with Step 1 or if it doesn't solve the problem.

Boot into Recovery by holding down the key combination command-R at startup. Release the keys when you see a gray screen with a spinning dial.

When the OS X Utilities screen appears, select

Utilities ▹ Terminal

from the menu bar. A Terminal window will open.

In the Terminal window, type this:

res

Press the tab key. The partial command you typed will automatically be completed to this:

resetpassword

Press return. A Reset Password window will open. You’re not going to reset a password.

Select your boot volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name) if not already selected.

Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.

Under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs, click the Reset button.

Select

 ▹ Restart

from the menu bar.

For future problems, is there any way to contact you directly, instead of spending countless $*(#&! hours struggling in futility?

Thanks for the kind words. There's no other way to contact me at the moment, but that may change soon.

There's no other way to contact me at the moment, but that may change soon.

Interesting - I think you might find yourself much in demand 😎.

Please read this whole message before doing anything.

Triple-click the line of text below to select it:

Repeat with this line:

You can then quit Terminal.

Allow me to explain something. FileVault is a powerful tool, but it's only suitable for advanced users. It deprives you of the ability to boot in safe mode, which is an important means of troubleshooting software conflicts. Therefore, if you're going to use FileVault, you have to keep your system free of potentially troublesome system modifications, especially the useless ones. You have many such modifications.

Your system is so heavily modified that, instead of trying to remove the modifications piecemeal, you should erase your boot volume, reinstall OS X, and then go through the initial setup process, importing only your user data and settings from backup — not applications or other files.

Back up all data to at least two different storage devices, if you haven't already done so. The backups can be made with Time Machine or with a mirroring tool such as Carbon Copy Cloner. Preferably both. You must be certain that you can restore everything to the state it's in now.

First, deactivate FileVault. That will take a few hours. Then boot into Recovery (command-R at startup), launch Disk Utility, and erase the startup volume with the default options.This operation will destroy all data on the volume, so you had be better be sure of your backups. Quit Disk Utility and install OS X. When you reboot, you'll be prompted to go through the initial setup process. That’s when you import the data from one of your backups. For details, see here:

Setting up a new Mac from an old one

Import only "Users" and "Settings" – not "Applications" or "Other files." Don't import the Guest account, if it was enabled on the old system. After that, run Software Update. If you still have the problem, take the machine to an Apple Store or other authorized service provider for hardware testing.

If the problem is resolved after the clean installation, reinstall your third-party software selectively. I can only give general guidelines. Self-contained applications that install into the Applications folder by drag-and-drop or download from the App Store are usually safe. Anything that comes packaged as an installer or that prompts for an administrator password is suspect, and you must test thoroughly after reinstalling each such item to make sure you haven't restored the problem.

Never reinstall crapware such as "TechTool," "Drive Genius," "SIMBL," "AppCleaner," or "CleanApp."

Before installing any software, ask yourself the question, "Am I sure I know how to uninstall it without having to start this process all over again?" If the answer is "no," stop.

Never install any third-party software unless you know how to uninstall it.