[itim55]

Many times when I start up my iMac, it says the Finder has quit, but it still continues. Then, other times, I start to lose my icons and System alert icons as well, one by one. Finally, sometimes my iMac behaves as if every graphical element is lethargic, causing slow screen redraws. I've deleted the desktop, trashed the Finder prefs, and run Norton. What is wrong???

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Kato! You have turned my apartment into a..a..Chinese nookie factory!

Have you tried basic troubleshooting procedures like starting with extensions off?

[itim55]

Yes, and every time I do that, I find a potential culprit, delete it, and everything returns to normal. Then, a couple months later, the problem appears again.

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Kato! You have turned my apartment into a..a..Chinese nookie factory!

[yoyo52]

Do you do monthly routine maintenance, like rebuilding the desktop weekly, and rebuilding the HD with DW and defragmenting monthly or every two months? I don't know if that's essential, but I do it and have almost no problems.

Also, for the issue you describe, I'd dump the Finder preferences and restart.

[itim55]

yoyo, I did and do everything you mentioned, and it still sometimes does that!

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Kato! You have turned my apartment into a..a..Chinese nookie factory!

[AirSluf]

The system will relaunch the Finder whenever it quits. So the restarting on it's own part is normal, and take the machines word. The finder did quit. Lots of stuff can cause it to quit though, so it can be a real bear to track down. As long as my machine doesn't have a related crash, I just press blindly on, and save a lot more often.

For me Word, VPC and Epson don't like to play nice together and cause Finder quits, but I can't do without so...

[rambo47]

I had constant Finder quits under OS 8.6 on a PowerBook. Many remedies worked for a while, but the problem always resurfaced. Seems something was corrupting my Finder - not just the prefs. I reinstalled the Finder itself and kept a copy on my hard drive for future reinstalls. I never found the culprit, but I suspect FaxSTF.

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"Purity of Essence."
iDisk: rseijas
Homepage: homepage.mac.com/rseijas

[Costique]

Finder often quits when there is not enough memory allocated to it. You can change it, opening a copy of Finder with ResEdit or Resourcerer and

• changing numbers in SIZE resource;
• changing its file type from 'FNDR' to 'APPL', getting info and typing new memory requirements, after which changing back its file type to 'FNDR'.

Then you substitute the original Finder with the modified one and restart. As to the real numbers, that's a question of experiment. Personally, I never modify Finder and it unexpectedly quits once a month or so. The trick sometimes helps, though. It depends on what you usually do in Finder and what software you use.

Other possible problems are:

• a third-party extension/control panel which interferes with Finder;
• some networking issues, if you do have a local network;
• any hardware problem.

For example, on my UMAX machine the second hard drive occasionally 'goes to sleep'. Then Finder quits, cannot start up again, and in a moment the computer freezes completely. The only way to spin up the drive is to turn UMAX off and on. I'm telling the story because the real cause is not necessarily on the surface.

Sorry, but you'll have to experiment a lot.

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Make no assumptions

[itim55]

Thanx! I'll do all that!

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Kato! You have turned my apartment into a..a..Chinese nookie factory!