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Level 1

4 points

Finder unexpectedly Quit while reopening windows

Everytime I startup my Macbook, I see the following error message box: "The last time you opened Finder, it unexpectedly quit while reopening windows. Do you want to try to reopen its windows again?. I cannot open up finder long enough to do anything as it closes within seconds. My desktop icons are also continuously flashing on and off. Has anyone had this problem and been able to fix it? Thank You.

MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on May 15, 2014 5:36 AM

21 replies

Eric Root

Level 10

684,045 points

Oct 21, 2015 9:34 AM in response to Server rookie

Try restoring from a backup that pre-dates the problem.

Oct 21, 2015 9:41 AM in response to Eric Root

Thanks Eric. I tried that booting from the TechTool eDrive and with TM restoring the Library of the User involved. However the TM restore was terminated due to permission issues. I can't use TM on the User involved as I can't point to the Library as the Finder keeps crashing. Any ideas for a workaround? Booting form the other User on that disk? I probably encounter permission issues there as well.

Oct 21, 2015 2:03 PM in response to Server rookie

Some success! While running another session with EtreCheck I came across a warning about a faulty AmazonShopping plugin for Safari. Something that was sneakily installed. I trashed that including another Safari extension I wasn't using and booted again. Now the Finder is stable. That leaves me with (hopefully) one problem. In a desperate act I installed 10.7 again from the original thumb drive thinking it would run a migrating install. But it didn't. I use Time Machine to only back up the system, not the entire disk. Now how can I restore my system from TM which is 10.7.5?

Eric Root

Level 10

684,045 points

Oct 22, 2015 10:14 AM in response to Server rookie

Boot into the Recovery Partition and restore from there. This will erase the disk, so copy your data files to somewhere else before restoring.

Oct 22, 2015 11:26 PM in response to Eric Root

Thanks Eric. That will be a tricky task. I will use CCC for that. And think about a better strategy for making system backups using CCC as well as TM is pretty much useless for this. I tried using TM to restore the system being logged in at other user on this disk but got stuck at the boot.efi file. Otherwise this would have been the quickest solution.

Nov 3, 2015 4:23 PM in response to Server rookie

After some very busy days I found the time to do this tricky task (worked on another machine in between). Ran the recovery disk and put back the system from TM. After 2,5 hrs it put back not only my system but all my apps too. I had the right backup strategy after all. For now I can only detect a few glitches. Some apps icons were missing from the Dock and 2 apps were missing from the machine. I'm still testing and checking but at least this saves me tons of hours reinstalling apps, plugins etc.

Finder unexpectedly Quit while reopening windows