csmcclellan
Level 1 (8 points)
Desktops

Q: Finder no longer displays

The Finder feature on my MacBook Pro no longer displays my files AND I cannot even exit nor minimize Finder.  How can I resolve this?  Thanks!

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)

Posted on Sep 8, 2016 7:54 AM

Close
csmcclellan

Q: Finder no longer displays

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Sep 8, 2016 8:07 AM in response to csmcclellan
    Level 9 (60,774 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 8, 2016 8:07 AM in response to csmcclellan

    what happens when you choose Finder from the Dock, or click on the desktop? does "Finder" appear next to the  menu?

     

    If you choose "New Finder Window" from the Finder's File Menu, does it open a new window?

  • by csmcclellan,

    csmcclellan csmcclellan Sep 8, 2016 8:45 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 8, 2016 8:45 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

    Unfortunately, I cannot open another Finder window; yes, Finder does appear next to the Apple icon.  Finder simply "hangs up."

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,Helpful

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Sep 8, 2016 10:23 AM in response to csmcclellan
    Level 9 (60,774 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 8, 2016 10:23 AM in response to csmcclellan

    There are several ways things could have become corrupted:

     

    • You could have added so much junk, including but not limited to so-called Virus checkers that you have managed to completely bollix up your Mac. If this is the case, restarting in Safe mode (hold down Shift at startup) should give relief, because it loads a minimal set of extensions. If it does, you need to clean out all those add-ons.

     

    • Your drive could be failing, or have a corrupted directory. Safe mode does one pass of repair, it it may help there as well.

     

    • Your Mac OS could be clobbered. A re-install-in-place (right over the existing Mac OS) does not deliberately bulk-erase anything, but instead does a file-by-file re-write of the more than 350,000 files that make up MacOS. This should not delete anything, but if things go wrong, other files may be lost.

     

    • You could have a Hardware problem. Running Apple hardware test can sometimes detect gross problems.

     

    NB> This should be a wake up call for you. If you do not already have a Trusted backup, you need to make one now. Get a large external drive, preferably 3x or larger than the stuff on your Internal drive, and activate Time Machine. The drive can be very slow (USB-2 is sufficient) because after the first backup (which takes all afternoon to all night) the incremental backups are small, and work at low priority in the background.

     

    The next step is to ERASE your drive, and re-Install from backups. If you do not have a Trusted backup, you lose everything.