Finder doesn't work after OS X El Capitan upgrade!

Hi! I have THE SAME PROBLEM!!! Ugh! NO access to full finder at all! I do not have XtraFinder at all so that is not the problem. But I just upgraded to el captain yesterday and now I have no way to ruin full finder and I also do not have a Spotlight icon anywhere! :-( I don't know how to access files without finder. This is very annoying! I need to transfer some PDFs to a USB drive and I can't because finder will not open! :-(

Awesome thank you! I will try that. This may be a stupid question but on El Capitan is there a way to make all the desk top icons actually show up on my desktop? If I could see my Hard drive Icon (like on the old full funder mode), then I could access my files. Since I updated I do not know how to make my desk top icons come back, I figure its because Finder is not working. I was sadly (well actually I was rather happy) running Snow Leopard but since there were no more security updates for Snow Leopard I figured I should update and get up to speed with everyone else and of course just like usual things are a little messy. I didn't feel like dealing with all the messiness of a new update, which is why I stayed with Snow Leopard for so very long.

Have you checked for an update to XtraFinder or uninstalled it?

Hey there. So today I tried a few different things. This is what ended up working... I downloaded Commander One so I could access my files. I tried deleting the finder.plist from my system's library BUT thanks to the newest update I could not delete it because it was not accessible to me as a regular Mac user... Guess Apple thinks I should go pay someone to delete the finder.plist? i don't know. I miss repair the permissions feature too... So since that didn't work I went to the terminal from Commander One and I typed rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist then hit enter. Restarted the computer and now thankfully I have a fully working Finder and Spotlight. Problem solved. I hope this helps you! take care.

Awesome! Im so happy it worked for you too! :-)

Great, I downloaded Commander One and followed the same procedure, now I can't open Finder at all, except in File>New Smart Folder Used to be able to right click the finder icon and choose "Nerw Finder Window to access Finder. Cannot do that now either.

I found an easier way by accident. I went to Applications folder at the bottom of screen (sorry, can't remember the name of that menu right now, brain fog). Anyway, the very last icon at the bottom of the apps folder is Open in Finder arrow. Click on it and it opens Finder window, finally! From there I went into Preferences and chose the hard drives I wanted on desktop from General tab. From Sidebar tab I selected Devices and the usual options for Favorites. Woolah! Finder now works for me. When I select Finder from the bottom app bar it opens right up. Hope this helps others.

Ah, it just came to me. The Dock. Go to the Dock>Apps>Open in Finder.

just wondering if you're liking the el capitan yet (saw you liked snow leopard and, as you can tell by my 'user name' I LOVE AND MISS SNOW LEOPARD!!! if you use garageband--i use that the most--i'm assuming you're really hating the so-called upgrades)...

ANYways, my the sidebar of my finder used to show "Today" and "This Week" (and something else i can't remember probably "This Month") listing everything you did in any program for that particular day or week... i LOVED having them there but can't find them or a way to put them back!!! do you know what i'm talking about? ...and, if so, any idea how to get them back? thx!

Mine says commander not allowed to open terminal helllp

Thanks very much, Violet, worked like a charm. Why doesn't Apple provide this support?