Finder not responding

if none of the other non-terminal steps work (they didn't for me because I couldn't even access the Finder application), then Terminal is the way to go. But if you don't want to go about removing files from terminal, you can just move them (so they are still accessible in case something goes wrong). This worked for me to fix the issue.

mv ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist ~/Desktop/preferences

This moves the plist file to a file called preferences on the desktop, so I can always restore it if necessary.

It still didn't work immediately after a full shut down and restart, but I relaunched finder a few times, made sure that under "Options" it was set to "This Desktop", and then eventually a menu appeared that allowed me to "Go to" a specific folder. About 5-10 minutes after going through those steps, the finder folders and all my files finally reappeared. I'm not sure if the last few steps have anything to do with it or if it was just a matter of waiting...but you might want to try all that just in case.