July 11, 2007 8:35 AM PDT

Mac OS X 10.4.10 Special Report: Finder crashes -- fixes

by CNET staff

Finder crashes occur for some portion of users after every incremental Mac OS X Update, and 10.4.10 is no exception. Interestingly, some users have reported that updating prebinding, via the following process, resolves this issue:

Log in as an administrator
Open the Terminal (located in Applications/Utilities)
Type: sudo update_prebinding -root / -force and press Return.
When prompted for a password, enter your admin password, and press Return again. The process may take a few minutes, and you may see various messages flash by. The process is complete when the Terminal returns to a normal prompt.
Type exit and press Return.
Check for the capability to launch Microsoft Office applications.

Other potential fixes include:

Re-apply combo updater The tried and true method of re-applying the Mac OS X 10.4.9 combo updater has proven successful for some users experiencing this issue. Download links are as follows:

Mac OS X 10.4.10 Combo Update (PPC) [165MB]

Mac OS X 10.4.10 Combo Update (Intel) [293MB]

Mac OS X Server 10.4.10 Combo Update (PPC) [218MB]

Mac OS X Server 10.4.10 Combo Update (Universal) [391MB]

Delete Finder .plist In many cases, Finder crashes can be resolved by deleting the files: com.apple.finder.plist and com.apple.sidebarlists.plist from the following directory:

~/Library/Preferences

then restarting. [note, this is the Library folder inside your home user folder].

Remove third-party contextual menu items Though it is usually useful only for a situation where the Finder crashes when control-clicking (or right-clicking) an item to access its contextual menu, it may also be applicable in cases of inexplicable Finder crashes.

Check the following folders:

~/Library/Contextual Menu Items/

/Library/Contextual Menu Items/

for recently added third-party contextual that could be causing the crashes. Try temporarily removing all items, then logging out and back in (or restarting) and check for persistence of the freeze. If the problem is gone, add files back one-by-one to determine the culprit.

Notorious culprits for this issue include StuffItCM.plugin.

Check for corrupt/bad fonts, clear font caches Repeated Finder crashes can be caused by corrupt or otherwise problematic fonts or font caches.

First, try clearing font caches with a tool like Font Finagler. Failing that, inspect the following directories:

~/Library/Fonts (the tilde [~] represents the current home user directory)

/Library/Fonts

/System/Library/Fonts

for recently added fonts that may be causing the problem. Temporarily remove them and check for persistence of the issue. For a list of all the fonts installed by Mac OS X by default, see Knowledge Base article #301332.

Look for problematic login/startup items Look in the following folder:

/Library/StartupItems

for any third-party startup items that could be causing the issue. You can also open System Preferences, then the "Accounts" pane and turn on or off specific startup items for each user. In some cases, processes that start here can interfere with normal Finder operation.