[Lancer409]

Hi, i'm a newbie mac user, just recently purchased a 12inch powerbook g4. I love it, it has pretty much been problem free, but i do notice that finder needs to be reset/restarted? quite often. I usually dont notice that finder is taking up alot of resources until i notice the temp go up to 140 degree's farenheit. I have a widget that show's the most cpu using programs and it's always the finder that's maxing the cpu out to 99-100% (on top of other programs that are running).

1) Anyone know why my finder needs to be restarted? seemingly atleast 1-3 times a day.
2) Is this normal, a bug, or caused by something i havent figured out yet?
3) thank you all for any advice and imput. Thanks again!

[Big Mac]

This is definitely not normal. There are some bugs related to the Finder's preview function, but I wouldn't expect that to be cropping up so often. Try this, log in to a different account and do some work there. If the problem doesn't occur, then you've isolated the bug to you're account. Do that and then let us know what happened.

[ryju]

I know on my machine I rarely have to restart the Finder, and CPU usage for it never goes up that high.

[chris v]

It could be searching for servers that aren't there any more. If you mount a volume at location a, and take the computer somewhere else, it'll get confused sometimes if it thinks that volume is still supposed to be mounted. You wanna make sure you eject any mounted volumes before moving the machine to nother location.

You might also run Panther Cache Cleaner, which will clean up the recent servers cache. I was having lags and stalls with the Finder on one of my machines, and that fixed it up.
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/16494

CV

[Lancer409]

thanks for the suggestions, i'm going to download that cache cleaner and see if it fixes it up. if it doesnt, i'll go and make another account and use that for a while. just that i got all those gui changes on this thing and it's so nice to use .. i'm hesitant to do it from scratch without all the programs i need (having to redo it all) but i will if the cache cleaner doesnt work. thanks again for your suggesetions. last night alone i re launched the finder like 6-7 times... i dont understand what u mean by volumes or whatever but i'll see

[Lancer409]

I just realized why the finder went nuts. I've used cache cleaner a bunch of times, repaired, did the maintenanceoptions etc...

Finder still needs to be relaunched (it maxes cpu to 100 continuosly until i relaunch)

I just found atleast 1 symmptom that causes it.

When i open my finder and load the picture page (199 pix), it does that crash thing. it doesnt crash exactly, just that it maxes the cpu .. i dunno for how long.

originally i thought it was because i had preview mode on (shows a thumbnail of picture instead of an icon. when i turned that preview thing off, and i opened that folder again, same problem.

i didnt reboot but i shouldnt have to. cant a powerbook show thumbnails of those pix without killing cpu? i know i can on xp. (no flames please). is something wrong with the settings?

[Ω]

Have you tried trashing the finder prefs?

[Lancer409]

Originally posted by _?_:
Have you tried trashing the finder prefs?

what does it mean to trash finder preferences?
i'm a windows user until i picked up this powerbook .. so i dunno what that means
i am assuming drag to trash and delete it. does apple automatically open a new finder preference file? will this damage my os? i am like, one step away from reinstalling osx from the dvd's that came with the laptop. hope u are still online for a quick reply

[Appleman]

Originally posted by Lancer409:
what does it mean to trash finder preferences?
i'm a windows user until i picked up this powerbook .. so i dunno what that means
i am assuming drag to trash and delete it. does apple automatically open a new finder preference file? will this damage my os? i am like, one step away from reinstalling osx from the dvd's that came with the laptop. hope u are still online for a quick reply

You can always trash preferences. They simply will be made new when starting the app, or in this case after relaunching the Finder.

[Ω]

Try here:

http://thexlab.com/faqs/finder.html

[Lancer409]

darn, i just deleted both files, restarted comp, still have same problem. i would take pictures, but i dont know where to host 'em. i could email 'em. i'm going of a konfabulator widget that tells me what the cpu usage is, airport reception, etc. and the cpu monitor part updates every 5 seconds or so, and each update, the all (total cpu usage) is at 100%, and finder is always in red (heavy cpu usage) ... argh ... any ideas?

[Lancer409]

also did hardware test with no problems found, in case that helps

[Appleman]

Originally posted by Lancer409:
also did hardware test with no problems found, in case that helps

Why not get rid of all haxies and see how that helps?

[himself]

how many/what customizations do you have installed on your machine?

[Lancer409]

shapeshifter (expired - reverted back to aqua? (brushed metal windows).
-i am going to license after a reinstall or a finder fix.

candybar, pixadex, warcraft iii
konfabulator (expired) not sure if i'm going to license konfabulator

i dunno ... i dont remember everything on it.

is there a software version of that hardware check?

[zen jihad]

Set up another account, see if the problems are related to just your own one.

[Lancer409]

that's the thing, i wouldnt want to use a different user acct because of how i have everything set up on mine already. but let's assume i set up a second account and i have no problems. how would i know what it is that is causing it, or what would solve it?

[Lancer409]

anyone anyone anyone? imma reinstall osx soon then ... shrugs. i'm just curious as i always assumed apple would be way more stable than this. only thing i have should be the usual shapeshifter-candybar,vlc .. i dunno what the problem could be.

[Uncle Skeleton]

instead of reinstalling the whole OS, try using another account for a few days. Don't install anything there that you don't need (by need I mean productivity apps, not eye-candy). You'll have to just suck it up and live with teh Steve's version of the world for a few days. Chances are, the problem won't come back during this time. That will tell you that it's one of the "haxies" you installed that causes the problem. Then you can add them back (either to the new account or to your own account after uninstalling them all first), and you can find out which one causes the problem. The exception of course is any "haxie" that tells you it installs for all users. I wouldn't know which those might be because I don't use them, but I'm sure someone else here will know.

And sorry for the over-use of "air quotes" but I just can't bring myself to use the "word" "haxie" with a straight face, it's just the best way to "describe" them """"""""

I used to use the eye-candy things too (in OS 8 or so), and after a while I decided it was better to have a default installation that was tested by all app developers and stable, than to have something that was different for the sake of different.

[Lancer409]

the bad thing is, last night i actually registered those eye candy apps. besides that, it's only 3 apps ... how bad can it be?!? ya know? i'm wondering if it's some other programs i slogged on here and some how bonked up .. being a newbie user (i'm a windows person up til i got "my preciousssss" .. haha .. airquotes are fine ... airquotes in parenthesis are even better! (""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" """"""") ... .. ok you can see that i'm bored.

1)My question to you is this. Is it possible, to do a full install on one partition of the harddrive, then install all my programs on the second.

That way, I have a stable os, and then a partition for apps/programs/software/games/eyecandy/office. If any problems arise, i'd "somehow wipe and reinstall all those programs" without having to re install the os.

2) How can i do the above without buying another program. (within the last month, shelled out for new laptop, new case, software, eye candy, etc) and i'd prefer not having to pay a small fortune (relative to me, not bill gate's funding) to have this done...


Thanks a bunch guys .. MacNN kicks ass, and you guys rock! (am i allowed to say ass?) hehe

[Uncle Skeleton]

I'm not saying to throw them away, just to disable them and then re-enable them one at a time to find which one causes the problem. When you find it, you can either go back to the unstable system fat and happy with the knowledge of what's causing it, or you can write the developer and see if they'll either fix the problem or offer you a refund.

putting the apps themselves on a different partition will gain you nothing. First of all, it's no easier to wipe and restore a partition than it is to do so to your normal /Applications folder, and second of all there's nothing corrupt about the binaries themselves, they just aren't compatible with each other when running on the same system (at least this is the theory that we keep begging you to test; will you do it already?).

[asdasd]

Just sample the Finder when it is in that situation: Not too difficult.

In Terminal type

sample Finder 2

Where 2 is the number of seconds. Post the results here.

[msuper69]

Originally posted by Lancer409:
the bad thing is, last night i actually registered those eye candy apps. besides that, it's only 3 apps ... how bad can it be?!?...

All it takes is one. Perhaps just one bad line of code.

[Lancer409]

Lancers-Computer:~ Lancer$ sample Finder 2
2004-05-31 18:24:45.884 sample[390] Couldn't start c++filt for C++ name demangling
Sampling process 269 each 10 msecs 200 times
Sample analysis of process 269 written to file /tmp/Finder_269.sample.txt
Lancers-Computer:~ Lancer$

that was done while finder was opening my picture folder. the pictures have thumbnail preview. the cpu usage was at 100% (according to Cee Pee You (unsanity's cpu usage thingy)

Last login: Mon May 31 18:24:42 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
Lancers-Computer:~ Lancer$ sample Finder 2
2004-05-31 18:29:46.141 sample[397] Couldn't start c++filt for C++ name demangling
Sampling process 269 each 10 msecs 200 times
Sample analysis of process 269 written to file /tmp/Finder_269.sample.txt
Lancers-Computer:~ Lancer$

this is when i closed finder. the meter still read 100% cpu usage.


after i relaunched finder, the cpu usage dropped to 6-11%, and when i went into the terminal again, it shows this

Lancers-Computer:~ Lancer$ sample Finder 2
2004-05-31 18:32:39.384 sample[403] Couldn't start c++filt for C++ name demangling
Sampling process 398 each 10 msecs 200 times
Sample analysis of process 398 written to file /tmp/Finder_398.sample.txt
Lancers-Computer:~ Lancer$


something wrong?

[Lancer409]

btw, if it helps, there are approx 220 pix in my picture folder, it took several minutes to load a thumbnail of all those pix in my finder. (you know, the picture preview instead of a icon of a jpg)