finder Problem with OS X

[ascension]

My knowledge of Macs is very limited so i hope i don't sound like a total gimp when trying to explain this. I also apologize if this post is in the wrong forum.

i am on my aunts G4 cube and no matter what we try to do we cant seem to get the finder to show up. It comes up for a brief second then goes away then comes back and does the same thing. it just keeps disappearing. i tried doing a force quit to relaunch it and it looks like it keeps opening multiple instances of itself in the list of available applications to close (almost like an endless loop). If i open an application like safari or something the finder stays put, but once the application is closed, finder starts blinking on and off again. This happens regardless of what user is logged in. I tried rebooting while holding down the shift key but that didn't fix it. Does this look familiar to anything else anyone has seen before?


Any help would be greatly appreciated, an again i apologize if this is in the wrong forum.

Thank You!

Dustin

 

[symphonix]

Your best bet is to boot from the Mac OS X installer CD by loading the disc and holding the C key while switching on.

Once the installer screen loads, you can go to the Installer menu at the top of the screen and select "Disk Utility".

In here, select your volume and run a Repair Permissions on the disk. This fixes the problem 9 times out of 10.

If it still won't load correctly, you can once again boot from the installer disk, this time installing with the "Archive & Install" option. This will archive your old system settings and files in a special "Archived System" folder. Once you've finished the install, you'll be in a fresh-out-of-the-box Mac system, but you'll be able to recover your files from the Archive folder.

 

[TommyWillB]

This happens to me EVERY time after I do a sofware update and restart. Restarting a second time has always solved the problem.

(Of course restarting is tricky, because the menu comes/goes as fast as the finder does...)