Finder Restarts Continuously

[soxmon]

I have a Macbook pro 2.33GHz running Mac OS X version 10.5.2

Until this morning, it has been working fine. I was downloading a free trial of Adobe Illustrator for windows (to use in my parallels windows XP), and suddenly the finder quit and started restarting continuously. Each time it restarts, it stays open for less than a second before quitting and restarting again (not enough time to even open a window).

Other programmes run fine as long as I launch them from my dock. I can't open a finder window to launch other programmes that aren't in the dock.

I would delete the adobe file I downloaded to see if that is the problem, but I can't even find a way to delete it as I can't open finder!

I have two user accounts on the computer and this problem happens with both of them.

Any ideas?!

Thanks.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

I'm still using Tiger, soxmon, but if you have the install disc then I would boot from that and run Disc Utilities to repair Permissions then reboot and see what difference if any, that makes.

Press and hold the "C" key upon hearing the startup chime to boot off the disc.

Let's see how that goes before taking it further ....

 

[soxmon]

Thanks for the reply. I just pulled my external hard drive out the computer (so I could plug it into another computer to get some data I needed), and my mac gave methe device removal message but then finder restarted fine and seems to be working. I'm not sure why that should have caused the problem (I've been using this hard disk drive for months without problems).
When I re-plug the drive in the same thing happens so it definitely seems to be a problem with this hard drive.
Odd because I haven't changed anything on the drive since yesterday when it was working fine :s

Presumably rebooting off the CD won't help as it's a problem with the external hard drive?

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Thanks for the reply. I just pulled my external hard drive out the computer (so I could plug it into another computer to get some data I needed), and my mac gave methe device removal message but then finder restarted fine and seems to be working. I'm not sure why that should have caused the problem (I've been using this hard disk drive for months without problems).
When I re-plug the drive in the same thing happens so it definitely seems to be a problem with this hard drive.
Odd because I haven't changed anything on the drive since yesterday when it was working fine :s

Presumably rebooting off the CD won't help as it's a problem with the external hard drive?

Yeah I wouldn't have advised that if I knew what I do now about the history of this issue ....

Is this something you've been doing successfully for some time? Removing and re-connecting your Ext HD ... but this time when you booted up after the Ext HD was connected, the Finder kept re-launching over and over?

 

[soxmon]

Yeah I wouldn't have advised that if I knew what I do now about the history of this issue ....

Is this something you've been doing successfully for some time? Removing and re-connecting your Ext HD ... but this time when you booted up after the Ext HD was connected, the Finder kept re-launching over and over?

Yes that's right.

Sorry for the delay in replying - I've been away for the weekend. The problem is still happening reproducibly though (on every user account even new ones). The Ext HD works fine on other macs.

Thanks for your help ....

 

[rpphoto]

MacFixIt is reporting drive/Finder problems with this version of Leopard: http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20080225161207600

 

[soxmon]

MacFixIt is reporting drive/Finder problems with this version of Leopard: http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20080225161207600

Brilliant. Those two short steps fixed it. How bizarre! Thanks so much for the help.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Glad to see your issue has been sorted Well done rpphoto! I'll have to bookmark that article

 

[besddimo]

Hi there!

I'm having the same problem with the Finder relaunching continuously.

I have an ibook G3 running 10.4.11 I installed the latest security update a couple of days ago and today I used iPhoto to download some pics from my new digital camera (first time I actually hooked it up to my mac).

As I was rotating a pic iPhoto quit. No error messages, no nothing! Then firefox froze and the finder froze also. I forced quit firefox and finder relaunched. After that it kept relaunching. The only way to shut down is by keeping the power button pressed.

I started up from the installation DVD, repaired the disk and permissions (quite a few errors came up, one of the photographs was among them), rebooted. Still the same.

Applications open briefly through the doc but don't work and quit after a minute or two. I cannot access the hard disk.

I tried booting up in safe mode but I get only a glimpse of my user account pic and then it moves into Console mode asking for login and password. It says login is incorrect, the screen turns blue again, I get another glimpse of the user login screen and back into console mode. I've never used safe mode before, is it normal to go into console mode?

I would appreciate any help here as I want to avoid reinstalling Mac OS as I don't want to lose my data. My hard disk is pretty small and I don't think there is enough room for an "archive and install" installation.

Could this be related to the latest security update? Maybe it's something installed by my new camera in the startup folder? How can I get to it though?

 

[Maoltuile]

Brilliant. Those two short steps fixed it. How bizarre! Thanks so much for the help.

Hi,

I have the same symptoms, although it occurs when I plug in certain external drives. What did you do? (Macfixit is now behind a paywall. Groan)