OS X :: Finder Not Responding - Getting Colored Beachballs
Nov 13, 2007
OS 10.5 - Cannot find Finder. I was helping a friend today. I installed Leopard for her successfully last week on a Powermac G4. I installed a LaCie d2 Quadra 500GB backup drive and today I partitioned into 3 volumes. Backed everything up with Carbon Copy Cloner. and everything worked well. At the end, I ran Software Update which installed updates for Quicktime and iTunes. That's when the problems started. First, Spotlight started indexing all the backup volumes. I tried to stop that but couldn't. Then Finder was not responding, I tried to relaunch but it did not help. All I get is the coloured beachball. The dock is there, the applications work, but no Finder.
I booted from CDs, ran Verify Disk and all was fine. Tried to run Verify Permissions, and that was taking a long time (This seems to be a Leopard problem in general). I read online that this operation below in Terminal works, but I am not sure exactly how to type it as I have not used Terminal before. I also don't know if this is the right solution. Do I type exactly as it is below or without the quotation marks. I typed it without the quotation marks.
sudo mv "/Library/Application Support/DivXNetworks" "/Library/Application Support/DivXNetworks.prev"
I'm using a Mac Mini to target-disk my Macbook in order to transfer my User folder and some of my Applications. When I browse the Macbook's Applications folder via my Mac Mini, Finder beachballs every time I scroll down to a certain point (about a quarter of the way down), and I have to Relaunch. If I jump to the end of the scroll bar, it beachballs. I've tried column view, list view, and icon view, but whenever it tries to display folder content past that point, it beachballs.
when i went to shut down my imac the apple menu wouldn't show, it was just a white box, i clicked hide + show finder for some reason which brought back the full menu but it went away again. i restarted finder but now when i click shut down nothing happens. im having a panic attack, i really need help, im scared to shut down now because something similar happened about a year ago and my hard drive got wiped. i just don't know what to do, im not sure i have everything backed up, either. im running tiger, but that probably doesn't matter.
i repaired disk permissions, its still not shutting down and finder is persistently unresponsive after re-launching. i verified my disk and it said 'volume bit map needs minor repair', 'invalid volume free block count' and that machintosh HD needs repair.
2011 i7 Macbook Pro and have been using Lion since it came out. Only started having this problem in the past week.
Occasionally Finder will work. But most of the time it "crashes", or really just goes into a "Application Not Responding" state when I view it in activity monitor or right click the dock icon. Relaunching via force quit does nothing. Restarting sometimes fixes it but rarely and not for long.
Another thread suggested this string in terminal: rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist . It didn't work.
Info: MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4), i7 quadcore, 4GB
Just bought and installed leopard (upgrade on my macbook) and it was working fine for a bit untill i got a bit ambitious and was doing a bit too much while spotlight was indexing, so it froze, i restarted and now finder wontoad propery, i get a dock and a menu bar that is not responsive, and doesnt include any icons up the right end including the time, but the spotlight icon is still there. My desktop icons wont load either. I can load firefox from the dock and that is it. I have terminal in the dock but that just bounces for a bit and crashes. When i cmd-alt-esc and force relaunch finder it doesnt do anything...
i have recently been doing some things to my system as in this faq i found at http://www.index-site.com/Macosxspeed.html to "speed up OS X". and then not long after, i tried to move something out of my trash, and the finder locked up, my icons dissapeared, and it kept restarting! I rebooted my machine and the problem persists. it tries to run, freezes, not responds, then restarts. meanwhile, i can only get into programs that are on my dock.
i restarted, typed cmd-s, then fsck -f, and there were no problems there.
I put my osx panther install disc in, to try to do an archive & install(to reset prefrences) however i do not know how to get it to run, because i can't use my finder.
My FINDER is behaving erratically - in that, when I create new folders (which I can do with the mouse and right button) it will not allow me to name the file, as if the computer would not recognise the keyboard. What is weird, is that I then click on a web browser, or any other application and I can type as usual.
I assume it is then a problem with FINDER (?) - which after forcing to relaunch, works fine for a little while, but shortly, the problem comes up again
Having to relaunch finder every 5mins is not my idea of a smoothe operating system.
Since I first posted this question, I have managed to liberate more space- I now have 10GB free space - but problem persists.
I've just got an iPhone 5S, upgrading from an iPhone 4. I used to manually sync/backup to iTunes, and did one last backup prior to switching which completed with no problems. I thought I'd mention this as this was the last activity before the issue occurred.
When using the finder to navigate/open folders, I get the spinning beach ball which just hangs. When forcing to relaunch the window states (finder not responding). I can still use applications and browse the web with no problems, however moving the cursor over the finder results in the beach ball. After relaunching the finder it seems ok until you perform a couple of operations then it hangs again.
I have ran Disk Utility and repaired permissions and also restarted etc but the same problem remains. Also deleted preferences (assuming I deleted the correct ones). If I login to another user account then everything seems to be fine, however logging back into the admin user account – same problem. I've noticed that if I turn WiFi off, it resolves the issue. Turning it back on brings back the problem.
After I boot and log in if I attempt to open a drive or folder that's on my desktop it causes the Finder to be non-responsive and a beach ball persists. In the window of "Force Quit Applications" it reads "Finder (not responding)". If I force quit finder it will quit and relaunch, but then the same scenerio all over again. If I do a Spotlight search for say an App that's not in my dock and then select it I can get any App to launch. If I choose an App from my dock I can get it to launch. If I attempt to restart the machine while the beach ball is spinning the restart will be ignored and I have to hard shutdown and startup via the power button.
I also have another user account, on this system, which has the same problems.
I've run DU permissions repair and ran all weekly and monthly scripts via Onyx.
Booting in Safe Mode has the same effect.
Console
If I run Console and attempt to open a drive, on my desktop, I get:
"6/30/14 11:01:28.710 AM WindowServer[174]: disable_update_timeout: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "Finder" for over 1.00 seconds. Server has re-enabled them."
"6/30/14 11:01:42.711 AM WindowServer[174]: disable_update_likely_unbalanced: UI updates still disabled by application "Finder" after 15.00 seconds (server forcibly re-enabled them after 1.00 seconds). Likely an unbalanced disableUpdate call."
What can I do to restore the finder and get it working again?
Finder and iTunes are not responding. When I try to open this apps the colourful wheel starts but nothing happens. I tried the "force quit" option, but in the Finder case, is also not working. Everything else seems ok. What can I do?
I have a desktop Intel machine. Due to an error, it is trying to copy thousands of .jpg files onto the desktop. It keeps grinding away and I can'tdo anything else. The cursor is not frozen, but if I try anything I get the spinning wheel. I've tried restarting. I need to interrupt this copying and get all the photos off the desktop.
Just as I was saving a normal word document to my usb stick, word froze. This has happened before, so I tried force quitting it. This took a lot longer than normal, and the coloured beach ball kept on spinning. I tried relaunching the Finder, but nothing changed. Then I tried restarting the computer, got my inlog screen and logged on, but then I only got the icons in the dock below and no bar at the top of my screen. All my icons on the desktop have vanished too.
Horrified, I tried re-opening word, but no success. I can still open Safari, and iPhoto opened up, showed my pics but then said it wasn't responding either.
In my pop up window 'Force Quit Applications', the Finder is in red letters, with 'not responding' in brackets. IPhoto was in red too.
I work with Mac OS 10.3.9 (one month away from buying a brand new MacBook) and I have absolutely no idea what to do. Also, I'm not technical at all, so I really could do with a 'for dummies' answer, clearly indicating what to do and what NOT to do next.
Apple Macintosh (Intel) MODEL iMAC PROC 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo RAM 1 GB 667 MHZ DDR2 SDRAM DRIVE 300 GB
The hanging appears to have been caused when I accidently moved about 40GB of old photo's onto my desktop. Almost immediately I tried to cancel but all that happened is that the system has hung. Processer can be heard working in the background.
When i log onto my old eMac under my profile, it loads the wallpaper and the toolbar but nothing else. Whenever the mouse passes over the desktop itself, it just turns into that little pinwheel that signifies a problem. Whenever I try to use Finder, it locks the computer up completely. All applications on the toolbar work, including firefox and iTunes, but since Finder is broken I can't use things like external drives. Is there any way to get my computer to halt whatever process is confusing my poor finder without hurting my iTunes?
My finder and desktop seem to be frozen. Finder will not respond and all of my folders on my desktop have disappeared. My cursor will not work, only shows that rainbow spinning wheel. I have tried to repair the disk permissions but it doesn't seem to have worked.
I was going to delete something in trash and suddenly finder stopped responding. I don't want to break it. I've thought I should restart the computer or somehow fix it in disk utility... but I don't remember how...
I can still open the other programs just you know, the whole finder not responding..
I've assigned the tags I want to a file, I'll get the beach ball. If I go into the Force Quit window it will say that Finder is not responding. But if I wait about 20-30 seconds it stops and I can go about my business w/o re-starting the Finder. I only noticed this after installing Yosemite. I use tags A LOT.
Info: iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.5)
I force quit my finder because my Macbook pro was not allowing me to shut down due to open applications. Now, after several hard shut downs and multiple attempts o shut down in terminal and regular shut down
I have Mac Intel Base running OS 10.6.8. Finder seems to be corrupt. I have checked the system and it seems to be working properly. However, my Mouse and keyboard stop responding when I relaunch finder, and I have a very slow start up time (10 to 15 minutes till the mouse and keyboard respond). I ran Disk Warrior and got a lot of permission and file errors. Disk Warrior says they are fixed, but every time I run Disk Warrior or Disk Utility the same errors keep showing up. Trying to go to safe mode to check to see if extensions are an issue doesn't work because mouse and keyboard do not respond so I can't log in.
My computer stop responding so I had to force restart finder. Now my active programs indicator is not working. How do I get it to work again? I have tried shutting down my computer and that didn't work. I deleted and re-copied over the files, but that didn't work either.
I accidentally copied a whole folder of huge photos onto my desktop and now finder is not responding. I've tried force quitting it and relaunching it but it keeps crashing and not responding again.
I have a new 13" 2.2ghz 2GB MBP but its been feeling really slow lately. I keep getting the spinning beach ball when surfing in safari etc. When I type sometimes it lags and videos on youtube skip at times. My old MBP (in my sig) is perfect and has pretty much the same specs.
The mac I have listed below does the spinning beachball thing a lot when I'm using Mozilla's FireFox browser. It's got to the point some times where I have to hard shut down the machine by holding the power switched. I have the following installed with firefox as addons.
Office Live Plug-in 7.6.3(Microsoft) Shockwave flash 10.0.32 Jave Embedding Plugin 0.9.7.2 MRJ Plugin ver. 1.0-jep-0/.9.7.2 Quicktime 7.6.3 plugin Flip4Mac 2.2.3 Default GECKO plugin(No idea what this is)
I also have something for a facebook plug in but it's not listed and I don't remember what it did. I just removed the Mini-istat widget, maybe that was the problem, not sure. I just uninstalled Firefox with App Cleaner and reinstalled using something I freshly downloaded. I ran all the Tech Tool delux stuff that came with the MacBook Pro Apple Care CD set. I also play COD4 and World of Warcraft, without problem. iTunes Illustrator CS3 and MS Office run fine.
The issue I'm having is very weird taking into consideration that I just upgraded my hardware two months ago. I have an Intel X-25M SSD as my boot drive for OSX and a 1.5TB WD HDD with my Home Folder on it. Whenever, I launch an app it never launches immediately. I get a beachball that lasts about 5 seconds. When I try shutting down the computer I have to hit shutdown about 3-4 times before it does. Otherwise, it warns me with a message thats something like this: System cannot logout of user account because Safari is still in use. (but it's closed). Launching an app from an ssd should be instantaneous. So I don't understand if it is a hardware or software issue. I reset the PRAM ... helped for about a day but I'm back to the slowdowns. Any ideas. Also when I performed a software update for iTunes, the update installed but I got this warning so I have a feeling something is wrong.
My Mac Pro (specs in sig) has recently been really quite slow. Opening Safari and Adium and iTunes all at once causes repeated beachballs, as does opening new tabs, switching back and forth from expose' etc. I use onyx and take very good care of my equipment, but am admittedly tech-lame about how to speed it up. It also hangs in photoshop quite a lot, and although the files are large (1-5GB) it seems to do so overly much. My own thoughts lend me to think that I need to purchase another harddrive to use a scratchdisk, but I'm not really sure.
I've got lockups occurring on a 15" unibody mid-2009 MBP that last for 30 seconds at a time and then magically clear up. I get a beachball during this time. Happens in various apps (safari, mail, textedit, adium, firefox, etc). Activity Monitor shows DiskIO going to zero during these lockups - seems like any app that accesses (read/writes) to disk hangs during these times. I've looked at System Profiler, smartctl, hardware diagnostics, and disk utility and all say my drive is fine. Also ran xbench and the numbers look ok.
Seems other people are also having problems in the official support forums: [URL] Has anyone else seen this? Trying to figure out if this is a general issue or a few of us have bad hardware. Apple support is giving me the usual run around.
Why or how to stop Safari 5 from beach balling and crashing? I did not have the problem with Safari 4. It done it 3 times today in about 5 minutes. I had a problem last month loading mail from ATT/Yahoo and typed a series of numbers in DNS and that fixed that now this stuff. I thought Apple was better than this. I don't have any problem with Firefox.