[PKIDelirium]

OK, Finder just fux0red up on me. I relaunched it, and it came back with a beachball, so I relaunched it again.

Well, it quit, but it didn't come back! The Finder icon has the arrow on it showing it's running, but my desktop icons and finder are totally vanished.



I really can't reboot right now, is there any way to ge the thing to come up again?

Finder truly sucks. I was to get my hands on the programmers responsible for it and...

[alcimedes]

what happens when you force quit finder? Nothing?

[PKIDelirium]

Absolutely nothing now. my desktop is blank, no hard drive icon even. I clicked the finder icon in the Dock and it did nothing as well.

I'm afraid to reboot because if I reboot and Finder doesn't come up, that would really suck.

[Ebby]

To reboot or not to reboot? That is the question.
The first then I would do is shut down, boot in target disk mode, and backup. then if Finder truly is MIA, you still have your docs.

EDIT: Ha! We were typing at the same time.

[alcimedes]

So when you do the Apple-option-esc combo does it say finder isn't responding? or does it think Finder is fine?

[PKIDelirium]

Thats the problem, I don't have any backup method other than burning data CDs or DVDs. And without Finder...

It thinks Finder is fine, but it doesn't do anything.

[alcimedes]

I'm trying to remember, when Finder is dead do you still get the blue apple in the upper left corner?

[PKIDelirium]

Yeah, I have the Apple menu. I wonder if that security update screwed something up in Finder, things have been a little beachball-y since I ran it last night.

[alcimedes]

Ooh, excellent.

Go to system preferences, make a new user with admin rights, enable fast user switching, and see if you can access the files from your other, new account.

[Brad]

This one isn't necessarily the Finder's fault. I believe loginwindow is responsible for relaunching Finder and Dock. Keep that in mind when you log your complaint.

For what it's worth, I've seen this happen before too. A logout/login fixes it right up.

[PKIDelirium]

I hit Authenticate to make a new user account and it beachballed and locked up, I just had to FQ System Prefs.

Looks like loginwindow is indeed mucked...

Trying a logout now... lets hope this works.

Edit: Logout stalled out so I did a hard shutdown and boot, and Finder came up properly! I hope it doesn't do it again, that was really quite annoying.

[Ebby]

I had a little scare the other day after I updated too. Finder crashed and along with it every application one by one. I managed to repair permissions, delete caches and restart. Things were still buggy so I restarted again and they run smooth now.

[chucker]

Sounds like you're victim of a zombie process. As Brad says, that isn't necessarily Finder's fault; I've had this happen with iTunes various times (turned out to be an iPod communication problem). iTunes would hang, and force-quitting iTunes would make it impossible to relaunch it. (Even after kill -9.)