Q: How to restart Finder?

How would we know when you haven't told us what you have tried?

Press COMMAND-OPTION-ESC, choose Finder from list, click Relaunch button.

Open Terminal and type: killall Finder. Then press RETURN.

Terminal is in your Utilities folder. Paste the command line in the Terminal window and press RETURN:

     killall Finder

This just restarts the Finder but will not permanently quit the Finder.

In the Applications folder.

Exactly what do you want to do? I'm afraid that is not clear. All that you have tried do the same thing. They quit the Finder and immediately relaunch it because it is required by OS X.

Finder is an app that is designed to always be running, were you aware of that? Perhaps you would benefit by bookmarking and reading Apple's Mac Basics page located at https://www.apple.com/support/macbasics/

Dolphin1B wrote:

 

As you can tell, I am new to this Apple - where do I find the Utilities folder?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2477  Mac Basics: The essentials

New to Macs/My First Mac

There is Apple’s own Knowledge Base Articles:  http://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=search

The OS Help Menu.

Apple’s troubleshooting website:  Mac 101

The following reference book:  OS X Mountain Lion: The Missing Manual - David Pogue . 

This book is very easy reading, non technichal & non geeky.  I strongly recommend this book as it takes you step-by-step through Mountain Lion.

Can you click on the Finder in the Dock? If you hold the mouse button down on the Finder icon, can you choose "New Finder Window"?