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Mavericks Finder keeps crashing!

Since upgrading to Mavericks the finder crashes. Pop up box appears briefly, doesn't not show drives or menu bar. Any suggestions?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 1:02 PM

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Posted on Oct 23, 2013 1:09 PM

Please determine if the crashes continue to occur in "Safe Mode":


  • Safe Mode or "Safe Boot" is a troubleshooting mode that bypasses all third party system extensions and loads only required system components. Read about it: Starting up in Safe Mode
  • Starting your Mac in Safe Mode will take longer than usual, graphics will not render smoothly, audio is disabled on some Macs, and some programs (iTunes for example) may not work at all.
  • Merely starting your Mac in Safe Mode is not intended to resolve the problem, it's to observe its performance without certain additional components.
  • To end Safe Mode restart your Mac normally. Shutdown will take longer as well.


Reply with the results of the above.

63 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Oct 23, 2013 1:09 PM in response to mhparkman

Please determine if the crashes continue to occur in "Safe Mode":


  • Safe Mode or "Safe Boot" is a troubleshooting mode that bypasses all third party system extensions and loads only required system components. Read about it: Starting up in Safe Mode
  • Starting your Mac in Safe Mode will take longer than usual, graphics will not render smoothly, audio is disabled on some Macs, and some programs (iTunes for example) may not work at all.
  • Merely starting your Mac in Safe Mode is not intended to resolve the problem, it's to observe its performance without certain additional components.
  • To end Safe Mode restart your Mac normally. Shutdown will take longer as well.


Reply with the results of the above.

Oct 23, 2013 1:43 PM in response to John Galt

I have the same problem not only with Finder but also with Mail, Maps and Safari. All of the crash on start. Finder is constantly crashing.


I am now on safe mode and Finder does not crash. Safari is crashing and com.apple.Safari.SocialHelper too.


Mail is slowly upgrafig its database and Maps does not show any map (maybe too slow in Safe Mode) but is not crashing either.

Oct 24, 2013 5:14 AM in response to mhparkman

Have updated to mavericks - it gets to the final stage - completing installation - 7 mins then 6 mins then it crashes - it then takes you to sign in menu and when I open it shows system as 10.9 but only stats on for a few minutes then cuts itself off and restarts - shows system shut down unexpectedly and sends report to apple - then shuts itself off again - help

Oct 25, 2013 9:03 AM in response to mhparkman

Add another instance of Post-Mavericks-Install Finder Crash Syndrom (PMIFCS). Once I click past the user account selection page the desktop begins to populate but then the few icons that live on my desktop begin to flash off and on, as does an error message informing something about "The last time Finder was shut down...". Command-Option-Escape brings up the box that allows one to force quit open applications. Finder is the only application listed but one cannot interact with this box. The solution for restarting is holding down the physical on/off button. I repaired the disk and repaired permissions (using the revocery drive) but those actions have not changed the machine's behavior. I sent a note to Apple via its Feedback function, hoping that the words "Mavericks", "crash" and "Finder" will begin to show up on any troubleshooting exception reports read by Apple's smart men and women.

Oct 28, 2013 4:44 PM in response to mhparkman

Have any of you tried deleting the plist file: ~/Library/Preference/com.apple.finder. plist.


1. Move this file to the desktop

2. Quit the Finder

3. Restart the Finder.


If it works, trash the file. The Finder will recreate it when you restart the Finder. You may have to tinker with your settings to get them back to the way they were if you made any configuration changes.


If it doesn't work, you may want to restore the Finder file on your desktop to its original location, but you don't have to.

Nov 4, 2013 4:17 PM in response to mhparkman

sdevan, thanks for the tip, it also worked for me.


My mother updated to Mavericks on her 2010 iMac and Finder just kept crashing; the computer was starting up really slow, even for a 3 year old HDD and was running really hot. In another apple discussions thread someone mentioned that the akamai launch agent could be the problem so I deleted it from Users/ [name]/ Library/LaunchAgents. The computer booted up faster but didn't fix the crashing Finder and the computer was still burning up.


I followed sdevan's instructions and it worked. I also added in a computer restart on top of the Finder restart with a PRAM reset. I watched the computer for a few minutes with Console and Activity Monitor up to see if Finder would crash again or if it were doing anything out of the ordinary, but no news is good news and it worked.


The computer is stable and oddly running a bit quicker.


Thanks again.

Nov 4, 2013 4:26 PM in response to mhparkman

I solved my version of the Mavericks Finder Crash problem by doing 2 things: Deleting the HP and M-Audio items from the folder /Library/StartupItems/. That's the library at the root level of the drive, not in the user folder. I also removed an old version of the iTunes Helper from the startup items in the Users pane of the System Preferences. You can tell if it is outdated because it will have a yellow triangle next to it. My problem differed, however, in that it didn't start happening until a couple weeks after I installed Mavs, and I didn't get the pop-up box.

Nov 4, 2013 5:27 PM in response to mhparkman

Fory anybody that is still having this problem, there may be a quick fix. Check out this thread. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5526061?tstart=0


It was a google drive related issues. Your issues here could be completely different, but hopefully this helps a few people out.


*Edit*

It would appear that you can still use google drive, just diable the "show file sync status icons" option under google drive preferences. I've done so and have had not problems for the last 5 minutes. Keeping my fingers crossed.

User uploaded file

Nov 4, 2013 5:22 PM in response to mhparkman

I hit this issue this morning - went out for a coffee, came home an hour later and my finder was stuck in a looping crash. Upgraded to Mavericks a week or so ago so it was odd that it just started doing this this morning. Anyway I tried everything suggested above to no avail but persisted and it turned out that it's the Google Drive application that was causing the crash. I've killed it for now and the problem has gone away completely.

Mavericks Finder keeps crashing!

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