Freezing finder, even in safe mode

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Level 1

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Freezing finder, even in safe mode

Hello everybody, I have a huge problem. My finder is slow. I mean real slow. It takes about 5 minutes to open a program and they freeze most of the time so does the finder. same problems when in safe mode. Any Suggestions? Thanks.

MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)

Posted on Sep 17, 2013 6:20 AM

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Answer 1

arthur

Level 5

5,242 points

Sep 17, 2013 6:44 AM in response to maomaoo

How much RAM do you have?
How much free space is on your hard drive?
What other apps are open when your finder is doing this?
Take a look in Activity Monitor, and see if there is some process going on that is using too much memory or CPU.
Try some routine troubleshooting and maintenance maneuvers, like booting into your recovery partition and repairing your HD and permissions. When to Run First Aid in Mountain Lion's Disk Utility - For Dummies
Try a test user account. Isolating an issue by using another user account
Here is a general reference about the SBBOD: The Spinning Beach Ball of Death

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Answer 2

maomaoo Author

Level 1

0 points

Sep 17, 2013 6:57 AM in response to arthur

Thanks for your fast reply!

I have 4GB RAM and more than 360GB free space. That shouldn't be the problem.

There are no programs open besindes the finder since every program needs 5 minutes alone to open and opening more than one causes everything to crash and freeze.

I checked the CPU activity, (sorry forgot to say) but nothing unusual. less then 10% with finder and one program running.

Disk Utily told me everything is fine.

I haven't tried to log in via a second user account, because I managed to update to 10.8.5 after ages of waiting and everythings seems to run as usual again.

I'd be interested, though, where the problem might have been.

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Answer 3

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Sep 17, 2013 10:51 AM in response to maomaoo

When you next have the problem, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.

Launch the Console 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 Console in the icon grid.

Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar.

Scroll back in the log to the time you noted above. Select any messages timestamped from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).

When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.

Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

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