I'm really having difficulty because I was downloading an email attachment and next thing I know, my finder and the bar are flashing and all of a sudden my desktop items disappear. All other programs work fine except that they are constantly interrupted by the constantly reloading finder. Could anyone help to remedy this?
ElDiabloConCaca
U.S.D.A. Prime
If the file in question (or any file on your Desktop) has a funky name, this can cause the Finder to repeatedly crash and relaunch.
Try booting into single-user mode (or ssh from another computer) and see if there are any files on your desktop (especially that attachment) that are named with non-standard characters (anything other than alpha, numeric, or "_" or "-"). Either rename, move or delete them and see if that helps.
If not, try booting from the OS X Install CD and repair the disk using Disk Utility.
Try booting into single-user mode (or ssh from another computer) and see if there are any files on your desktop (especially that attachment) that are named with non-standard characters (anything other than alpha, numeric, or "_" or "-"). Either rename, move or delete them and see if that helps.
If not, try booting from the OS X Install CD and repair the disk using Disk Utility.
sourcehound
Registered
cotton518 said:
I've seen such issues when a mouse would be plugged into the back of an Apple Display. If your is, try moving it to the rear of the computer and see if that helps.
Luftwaffle
Registered
In most cases this appears to be a problem with a damaged file or funky filename on the Desktop. I have had several cases of the flashing/ blinking Finder on multiple machines, all down to that, but ONLY on OSX 10.4.3.
Remedy is a tad cumbersome: either boot up in single-user mode and cd to /Users/username*/Desktop or if you have a separate admin account on the machine, use terminal from that one instead. You need to have the root account enabled in order to access a user's desktop folder. Open a terminal window, type 'su' and the root password, then cd /Users/username*/Desktop and ls -l to see the files. In most cases it will be easy to spot the offending file. It typically looks like Blu??_Sky.jpg or something, simply do an rm Blu* to kill it (providing you haven't got other files starting with Blu).
*replace username* with your actual account name
Again, this only seems to be a problem with Tiger. Not seen in Panther at all. Also all files were attachments and pulled from Mail directly onto the desktop.
Good luck!
L.W.
Remedy is a tad cumbersome: either boot up in single-user mode and cd to /Users/username*/Desktop or if you have a separate admin account on the machine, use terminal from that one instead. You need to have the root account enabled in order to access a user's desktop folder. Open a terminal window, type 'su' and the root password, then cd /Users/username*/Desktop and ls -l to see the files. In most cases it will be easy to spot the offending file. It typically looks like Blu??_Sky.jpg or something, simply do an rm Blu* to kill it (providing you haven't got other files starting with Blu).
*replace username* with your actual account name
Again, this only seems to be a problem with Tiger. Not seen in Panther at all. Also all files were attachments and pulled from Mail directly onto the desktop.
Good luck!
L.W.