help!!!!! finder has crashed!!!!!

[charliecroker]

hi all.....somehow i have doubled up on all my mp3 and WAV files (as mentioned on a previous thread) .approx 2800 have gone onto my desktop and this has filled my harddrive to the point that i only have about 1.6 gig to play with.
Whenever i reboot the finder automatically opens on a folder full of wavs to back up which was on my desktop. All the files every time i reboot seems to try and put themselves into this file (as far as i can see) and this has completely crashed finder for me. so i cant get to my desktop files with finder to get rid of them. and the finder window will not close so i can do anything on my desktop. I seem to be in a catch 22 situation here and nothing is working.
people have previously mentioned using terminal to sort this but i havent got a clue what or where that is.
can anybody give me a step by step to hopefully get my mac working again???
Urgerntly??
thanks CC

 

[teapot]

Hi and welcome
Have you ried booting using you original system disk then accessing your hard drive from there?
Rgards
Teapot

 

[charliecroker]

hi teapot....is that the disk i was meant to get with the machine???????? havent a clue how to do this so no i havent tried it yet...can you help???

 

[teapot]

Hi
Yes the disk containing the operating sysrtem for your Mac.
Place it in the cd/dvd player and restart holding down the "c" keyyou will find a heading called utilitys on the menubar select disk utility. Within this find your hard drive and then try to repair permissions. If this is sucessful quit the installer and resart using start up disk
Teapot

 

[Ric]

Hi there charliecroker and welcome,

it's probably easiest to do this via the terminal, I don't think there are to many other ways of fixing this.

You will need to reboot and hold down the command and s keys untill you get dumped into terminal...you will see a lot of text and eventually a prompt...

You will then need to type in a few commands...

How does this sound so far !

First you will need to navigate to the Desktop folder...

Type:

~/Desktop

and then press return.

Now type:

pwd

and then press return.

This should confirm that you are in the correct folder (path)

Now type:

ls

and then press return. (lowercase L above !)

This will give a listing of every file and folder that's on your desktop...

From here we can then remove files folders if you want...

To remove a file type:

rm ~/Desktop/[B]thefilename[/B]

and then press return.

To remove a folder type:

rm -r ~/Desktop/[B]thefoldername[/B]

and then press return.

Please note this not like the Trash, once you delete something, it's gone.

Once you have deleted the files that you want then type:

reboot

and then press return.

and the Mac will boot back into the normal OS.

Regards

Ric

 

[charliecroker]

cheers ric...really appreciate it will have a go tonight and let you know

 

[Ric]

Please be carefull though, if you type in the wrong folder or filename, it will get deleted !!!

Use with caution !

regards

Ric

 

[charliecroker]

ric....really weird..got into terminal (i think) but it put something up about read only root folders then the prompt was root:
tried your codes but to no avail...it didnt seem to recognise the file or folder. 'Desktop'
sorry to be a pain but was there anything i was doing wrong??
help me obiwan....your my only hope

 

[Ric]

Hi Charliecroker,

my bad...

When you booted into terminal you need to mount the volume (hard disk first) then the commands work !

type at the root prompt:

/sbin/mount -uw /

then return

cd Users

then return

cd ls

then return

This will give the correct 'syntax' for your username directory...

cd [B]yourUsename[/B]

then return

cd Desktop

then return

Now you are in the Desktop folder and can carry on as the previous post...


To remove a file type:

rm ~/Desktop/thefilename

and then press return.


To remove a folder type:

rm -r ~/Desktop/thefoldername

and then press return.


Please note this not like the Trash, once you delete something, it's gone.


Once you have deleted the files that you want then type:

reboot

and then press return.

and the Mac will boot back into the normal OS.

regards

Ric