osx 10.3.9 finder crashed please help!!!!!

C

charliecroker

Registered
hi all.....somehow i have doubled up on all my mp3 and WAV files (as mentioned on a previous thread) .approx 2800 have gone onto my desktop and this has filled my harddrive to the point that i only have about 1.6 gig to play with.
Whenever i reboot the finder automatically opens on a folder full of wavs to back up which was on my desktop. All the files every time i reboot seems to try and put themselves into this file (as far as i can see) and this has completely crashed finder for me. so i cant get to my desktop files with finder to get rid of them. and the finder window will not close so i can do anything on my desktop. I seem to be in a catch 22 situation here and nothing is working.
people have previously mentioned using terminal to sort this but i havent got a clue what or where that is.
can anybody give me a step by step to hopefully get my mac working again???
Urgerntly??
thanks CC
 
Hi Charlie,
This is shankar. I will be helping you regardinng this issue , please try to enter the safe zone and from there please try to delete the doubled files.
 
hi shankar.......i put the computer into safe mode last night but finder had still crashed and i wasn't able to delete the duplicate files.
 
i think the problem lies here....the file permanently opened over the desktop is actually a file from the desktop that i use to keep wav files in....when the other music wav and mp3 files dropped onto the desktop a considerable amount seem to drop on top of each other in the top right hand corner....which is where the file opened by finder is...so my guess is the computer has crashed but trying to overload this folder, thus taking finder with it. so now i am not able to use finder at all. every time i reboot (including in safe mode) finder automatically opens this file up in finder, which then locks up, which then stops me getting to any of the files on the desktop...(god im pulling my hair out here :(
thanks in anticipation of your further help
gary
 
If you have another mac, you can delete/move the problem files with target disk mode. If you don't have another mac, you could probably delete the files in single user mode, but you would have to delete them then.
 
hiya....into single user mode, using terminal..but it didnt work, think i was given wrong instructions...i know its a pain but if you could do me a step-by-step on how to do this....i'm not bothered about losing these files as they are doubled up anyway...cheers, gary
 
To get into single user mode hold down Cmd+s while the system is starting up... it should boot up with no GUI and leave you on console as root

These are the commands to use.
## Lines beginning with ## are comments

##Go to your desktop
cd /Users/username/Desktop
##(if you don't know your username try "ls /Users"
##should show you the available home directories under /User)

##Check the number of files in your Desktop
ls -1 |wc -l

##Create a directory to move the unwanted files into
mkdir ExtraCopy

## Now move the files into the directory you've created
mv *mp3 ExtraCopy
mv *wav ExtraCopy

## Check the number of files in your Desktop again
ls -1 |wc -l
##The number of files in the desktop should have gone down ..

## Now reboot the machine
reboot

the extra copy of mp3s/wavs will be in folder called "ExtraCopy" on your desktop when you reboot. you do as you please with it now.

Kingsly
 
hi again kingsly
followed your instructions word for word and it worked up to showing me how many files i have on my desktop (2768!!!!!)

however the mx *mp3 commands didnt work

when i opened up ExtraCopy as a new folder the computer popped up something about it being a read-only file

any idea what i was doing wrong

thanks in anticipation...gary
 
## Now move the files into the directory you've created
mv *mp3 ExtraCopy
mv *wav ExtraCopy

did i misunderstand this bit ????????
 
those commands should move all mp3/wav files to the folder "ExtraCopy"

*mp3 is a wildcard that matches all files ending with "mp3"

so if your files have a different ending or maybe in upper case

you can try

mv *MP3 ExtraCopy

(you'll need to do a "cd /Users/username/Desktop" first )

About the read only error that's because you created the folder as root and your are using it a regular user.

Running the following command as root should fix it.

chown username:username /home/username/Desktop/ExtraCopy
 
If the errors are occuring while in single user-mode, it isn't a permissions/ownership issue. I think it is because you have to mount the system in order to make changes to it. When you first boot into single user mode, you'll get a message saying something to the effect that fsck has not been run and telling you how to make changes to the file system. Basically it tells you the commands you should run to (i) fsck and (2) mount the system. Once you've done those things, you should be able to make the changes described. Be *very* careful though. You can wipe your entire drive as root so double-check everything before hitting enter/return.

- cfr
 
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