[cpn]

The finder is stalling. I just click once on a document or application and I get the spinning ball. Go to Force Quit, and it says Finder (not responding). I reset the PRAM twice. The first time, it helped for about a day, the second time not at all. Have repaired permissions twice (once after each PRAM reset).

There doesn't seem so far to be a problem using the menu bar (such as logging out or restarting or turning on airport). And I can use Launch Bar to launch an application and then work within it. It's just the finder, although I can use it to scroll up and down

I have an iBook G4 (1.33 Mhz, 1 GB ram).

Any suggestions?

[ibook_steve]

Only 1 GB of RAM (though that may be the limit in your machine)? With which OS are you running? Have you tried an archive & install? What does Activity Monitor tell you about which apps are using a high %CPU?

Steve

[cpn]

I use OS 10.4.11, and 1 GB RAM has worked without problems for 2 years, even when I have 10 applications open. I have not tried an Archive and Install, but I did check the Activity Monitor, and Finder usage went up to about 13% before stalling, but right before then I had about 1/2 of the RAM free according to the pie charts.

I did try a Safe Boot, and had no problem using the Finder. So, I deleted from my startup items Stickies, PopChar and KeyCue. When restarting, the Finder worked. In fact, it continued to work after PopChar and KeyCue came back into Startup because I opened them. (I've taken them back out for now.) However, when attempting to add a startup item back to Login items, System Preferences stalled (not responding), although I am still able to delete startup items, just not add them. I can add them in Safe Boot.

[cpn]

Forgot to add, none of the other apps use a high % of the CPU in Activity Monitor.

[Big Mac]

Do you have another user account configured to check to see if this occurs in all accounts?

[cpn]

Yes, the same events happens in both my regular user account and administrator account.

One problem is that things seemed to work for a few minutes, and then not. In safe mode, I deleted more startup items in both administrator and user accounts, and everything seemed to be normal. But when I logged back in a second time in normal mode, the same problems started occurring: The finder stalling when clicking on an application, and system preferences stalling when attempting to add an item.

[Big Mac]

Usually "stalling" is a sign of a hard drive issue. Here are some repair ideas for you:

*Disk Warrior (or at the very least Disk Utility)
*Apple Hardware Test run
*Archive and Install of OS X
*Startup from a different drive; if things work normally then you know it's an issue with either files on your main hard drive or the hard drive itself
*Removal of third party peripherals and RAM

[cpn]

Thanks. I'll try those one at a time.

[Big Mac]

Oh yeah, and make sure you have a backup of your important files.

[cpn]

Update on what's occurred.

I did disk warrior, but still the same problems, and I used disk utility to repair the disk but no repairs were necessary. I took all the third party apps out of start up and also from the preference panes, but no solution. One strange thing is on a few occasions, the problem seem solved but when logging out and into another account, they came back.

Remembering that these problems began the day I installed MS Office 2008 and deleted MS Office X, I dragged MS Office X back from my back up and for about 3 restarts and log in/outs, everything seemed to be working fine. And then all of a sudden logging out of my user account into the administrator account, the finder stalling problem began again. I restarted and the administrator account worked again for a few login/outs but eventually, the problem returned until I restarted the computer.

My next step is to do an archive and install. I need to read up on that as I haven't done it before. But I'm wondering about the restarting fixing the problem for a time before it returns. Any thoughts?

[cpn]

One question: The hard drive test. Is that the same as using disk utility to check for repairs? Or is there something else?

[Big Mac]

Apple Hardware Test disc? It does a light test of your hardware components to rule out any obvious failures. It's on one of the discs that came with your iBook. I would move next to an Archive and Install of the OS since it seems to be a software issue.

[ibook_steve]

Well, you didn't say anything about Office before! Uninstall it! See if that fixes things.

Steve

[cpn]

It's been awhile as my laptop has been relegated to 2nd computer. But the Archive and Install didn't work. So, I clean erased and reinstalled the operating system, updated (10.4.11), and transferred everything back to the computer (but not MS Office 2008). It worked okay for a few weeks, then started acting up again.

I erased the hard drive again, reinstalled 10.4 (updating to 4.11), transferred my documents, but only a few applications (browsers, Mellel, NeoOffice, a few others, but nothing that hacks into the system and no startup when logging in apps). After doing that, I used Disk Warrior to repair permissions, and TechTools Micro (the disk that comes with MacBook) to check the computer) showed my laptop passing all tests.

I only used it sporadically but about a week (or two?) later, it happened again. The finder stalled. You can tell it is going to happen because when you highlight an application or document, the Preview of the item doesn't appear (just a blank area). Force quit and relaunch several times to no avail. So, I turned off the computer and restarted it, and right now the Finder is working fine. But I figure it's only a matter of time before it reoccurs.

[Cold Warrior]

This still points to some type of lower-level (RAM, HDD) corruption since it persists across reinstalls and wipes. What were the results of the apple hardware test? Test both RAM and HDD.

[cpn]

I just now finished running the tests again. (Everything on the iBook, including HD and RAM (2 512s), is original.)

Disk Utility said there was nothing wrong with the hard drive: "Volume passed verification."

TechTool Deluxe, which came with AppleCare, was run twice. Everything (I enabled all tests) passed both times: Processor, RAM, Video RAM, USB, Drive Hardware, Surface Scan, Directory Scan, etc.

[cpn]

One more note: This is occurring when I start up normally (I have no third party login startup items), but it doesn't occur in safe mode (at least this morning).

[TETENAL]

Open Activity Monitor and select the Finder in it. Then make the Finder stall, switch to Activity Monitor again and do View->Sample Process. Paste the results here.

[cpn]

I did the Sample Process and here are the results:

Analysis of sampling pid 319 every 10.000000 milliseconds
Call graph:
288 Thread_0f0f
288 0x23f8
288 0x2558
288 0x2e00
288 -[NSRunLoop run]
288 -[NSRunLoop runMode:beforeDate:]
288 CFRunLoopRunSpecific
288 __CFRunLoopRun
288 mach_msg
288 mach_msg_trap
288 mach_msg_trap
288 Thread_1003
288 _pthread_body
288 forkThreadForFunction
288 0x8934
288 -[NSRunLoop run]
288 -[NSRunLoop runMode:beforeDate:]
288 CFRunLoopRunSpecific
288 __CFRunLoopRun
288 mach_msg
288 mach_msg_trap
288 mach_msg_trap

Total number in stack (recursive counted multiple, when >=5):

Sort by top of stack, same collapsed (when >= 5):
mach_msg_trap 576
Sample analysis of process 319 written to file /dev/stdout
Sampling process 319 each 10 msecs 300 times

[cpn]

I just realized that I should have highlighted the process I wanted. So, here's the Sample Process again from the Finder:

Analysis of sampling pid 380 every 10.000000 milliseconds
Call graph:
284 Thread_0f0f
284 0x69e98
284 0x69ff0
284 0x4f18
284 0x8960
284 RunApplicationEventLoop
284 AcquireNextEventInMode
284 ReceiveNextEventCommon
284 RunCurrentEventLoopInMode
284 CFRunLoopRunSpecific
284 __CFRunLoopRun
284 __CFRunLoopDoTimer
284 0x5ba20
284 0x735ec
284 0x1ab9b8
284 0xc2ab4
284 0xc3224
284 0x1394b0
284 0x13c49c
284 dyld_stub_OpenADefaultComponent
284 0x1de340
284 0x1bb1e0
284 0x1ba02c
284 0x1ba93c
284 MDSchemaCopyAttributesForContentType
284 __MDSchemaCopyAttributesForContentType
284 _MDAttributeGetAttributesForUTIType
284 _MDCopyAttributeSchema
284 getClientPort()
284 _client_ClientCheckin
284 mach_msg
284 mach_msg_trap
284 mach_msg_trap
284 Thread_1003
284 _pthread_body
284 PrivateMPEntryPoint
284 TFSNotificationTask::FSNotificationTaskProc(void*)
284 kevent
284 kevent
284 Thread_1103
284 _pthread_body
284 PrivateMPEntryPoint
284 TNodeSyncTask::SyncTaskProc(void*)
284 MPWaitOnQueue
284 pthread_cond_wait
284 semaphore_wait_signal_trap
284 semaphore_wait_signal_trap

Total number in stack (recursive counted multiple, when >=5):

Sort by top of stack, same collapsed (when >= 5):
kevent 284
mach_msg_trap 284
semaphore_wait_signal_trap 284
Sample analysis of process 380 written to file /dev/stdout
Sampling process 380 each 10 msecs 300 times

[TETENAL]

It looks like it's doing something Spotlight related. If you turn off Spotlight (put your hard disk into System Preferences->Spotlight->Privacy) the Finder stops stalling?

[cpn]

I wasn't sure what I should do in Privacy because there was nothing there to "turn off." I wasn't able to drag or add any folders to Privacy, so I could check out trying to open a document in that folder. So, under Search Results, I unchecked all 14 categories, and at least for right now, everything seems to be working all right. So, if that's it, is there a fix for Spotlight?

[TETENAL]

If you drag a folder into the Privacy it excludes that folder from Spotlight. If you drag in your hard drive you turn off Spotlight practically. You definitely should be able to drag folders or (as an admin) your hard drive into the Privacy, or use the plus button to add to the privacy. If you can't something weird is going on.

If the reason for the Finder stalls is Spotlight, I have no idea how to fix the issue. First I would try to reindex your hard drive (add to privacy, wait a little, then remove it from the privacy and it will be reindexed).

[cpn]

Well, something weird is going on. I went into my admin account and attempted to drag the hard drive into Privacy. You see a border around the area, a ball with a plus sign on it, and also the spinning ball, but when it stops, nothing has been added to this area. This happens in my regular account, too.

But thank you very much for the help. At least until I get a permanent fix, I can disable Spotlight by unchecking all of the boxes.

[TETENAL]

Open Disk Utility, select your boot volume and do "Repair Permissions". See whether that fixes the Spotlight weirdness. If not paste

sudo mdutil -E /

into the Terminal from your Administrator account. This will cause Spotlight to reindex your hard drive which might fix it hopefully.

[cpn]

I repaired permissions with DiskWarrior, which had no effect.

With sudo, I seemed to have received an error message: Error, no index found for volume.

[cpn]

I've been reading a lot and one proposed solution is to delete .Spotlight-v100. But I have no idea of how to do this. Supposed the application Spotless can do this, but the directions are not clear how to do it with Spotless.

Anyway, can someone tell me how to delete .Spotlight-v100?

[cpn]

Update and perhaps resolution. I used Spotless to delete the entire Spotlight index, restarted, and everything seems to be working right now. We'll see.

Thanks for the help. I really appreciate it.

[cpn]

Well, deleting the Spotlight index worked for about 2 days. So, I have completely disabled Spotlight and removed it from the menubar via Terminal commands I found through MacWorld and MacFixit. I'll see if that works.