HELP. i am NOT a puter geek, which is WHY i have an OLD OSX from 2006.

[pansypoo53219]

my finder keeps freezing. can i fix it?

[freshwest]

1. Same thing I have. Is this the original hard drive? How many gigs are free?

Those are two things you could work on to ease the problem. The other thing is when Finder starts to freeze up is shut down my programs and do a Restart.

Finder often freezes if my browser is stuck loading something from a website. I count to three and if it's not going, I back out. That is often the cause of the freezing. Check your cache and cookies, that causes problems, too.

Another is loading a large iTunes library, or it's busy with Time Machine. If it's backing up, at times Finder will freeze up and not allow doing other things.

[NYC_SKP]

2. Do a Software Update. Clear your desktop and put everything there into a folder.

Then check "Activity Monitor" to see what's sucking up your resources. Turn off crap.

And have at least 15% free hard drive space.

[freshwest]

3. I'm in the process of transferring stuff to my new 2TB Passport.

From my two 1TB Passports and my 250g iMac. That means mixing the files up as some are dupes which resulted in things going into the Trash.

100g on the iMac is just my iTunes library. I've got 90g in two Desktop folders. I have to create a path to open the iTunes library from one of my two 1TB Passports to use on my 250g laptop. I don't want to transfer anything, just take the Passports with the laptop to access them.

But now I have 50g in my Trash I can't empty. The two 1TB Passports are dismounted properly. But the Trash behaves as if it's connected to the 2TB Passport which now contains nearly 1TB.

My Activity Monitor shows less than 3g left. I'll be calling Apple support before the week is out to get the Trash gone without accidentally deleting things from the 2TB.

Everytime I try to take things out to see what will or won't empty, it begins copying thousands of items to the Desktop and I have to stop it. Which is very bad.

I may have to dismount the 2TB Passport to empty the Trash, but I'm concerned since it's configured as MS-DOS (FAT 32). I'd have set it to OSX Journaled, but Disk Utility refused. There were conflicts with Trash before when I first began using the two 1TB Passports, also configured as MS-DOS (FAT 32).

The computer kept having kernel panics until I fooled around and fixed it, but I don't remember what I did. I'm more of an experimenter than a tech. But they both worked fine until the hub died.

I had to get the 2TB Passport because the hub that supported the two 1TB Passports, etc. died on me and I don't have enough ports to make direct connections. I bought three more hubs and one after another, they all died. I am using the USB port on the keyboard for everything including the 1TB drives.

It's working out okay, but right now I can't empty the Trash and it's getting out of hand. Still works, but can't go like this much longer.

Now, this thread was started by pansypoo and I only wrote to help here, when she gets back it could be we and others can help her out. What you wrote me should also work for her.

[pansypoo53219]

6. no itunes. more pictures.

[pansypoo53219]

5. trying to clean desk top, but it freezes

activity monitor?

[freshwest]

8. Look at the top bar running across the top of the screen.

That is your Finder tool bar. Going right from the Apple icon, see the word 'Go'.

Click on that and a drop-down list appears. Pick the option called Utilities.

The first thing will probably be Activity Monitor. Click on it and it will give you lines of data and horizontal bars to click on above a pie graph.

Click on Disk Usage. You will see sections there and to the left, lines showing Space Utilized and Space Free. If you still have the original 250g, for optimal performance you should no less than 20g in the Space Free line. Those are needed by the system itself to find things. When it doesn't have that free space, things freeze up.

Your most essential program on your computer is Finder since it allows you to navigate all things. Problems with Finder can show your Hard Drive is not functioning as you want. There are some things that happen in addtion to freezing, such as item or icon preview not working right, losing the icons or the color inside folders, names not showing up on files, and smaller inconveniences.

All of those are signs that your files are being corrupted. This is part of the life cycle of files and electronics, the current goes through and things wear out, AFAIK. That's why redundancy is a good habit to have. Burning files on discs, or putting them on a back up drive. Preventing power surges and moving equipment or the connections. Pretty senstive stuff. And it all is dependent on Finder.

Open Activity Monitor and if you are moving a lot of files around and are close to capacity, you might leave it in the Dock for easy access. I keep there when I am moving many gigabytes.

[pansypoo53219]

4. yeah. original. tho i changed identies.

i restarted. i turned it off + restarted. emptied trash + cash. i think it started when i was cleaning the desk top + was moving the hard drive icon.

i don't download much at all, don't use many programs. more photo mad.

[freshwest]

7. I don't allow my Hard Drive to show on the Desktop. Just folders and external drives.

Last edited Wed Feb 27, 2013, 01:35 PM - Edit history (1)

Do you have an external drive for Time Machine?

I had one but didn't have it installed a few years ago. About that time my iMac was beginning to do strange thing and freezing up. When your Hard Drive goes, there is little warning. It just goes. In fact, as the technician told, it is guaranteed to go, they have a limited life.

Mine went out a few years and since I had 230g on it that was terrible, but I was referred over to a good shop that is honest and cheap and they spent a week with fans blowing at my very dead hard drive to keep it cool. They recovered everything I wanted to the external hard drive I hadn't used yet, then loaded it back up. I'm a biga believer in doing back ups, and Time Machine does a continous background scan and then backs them up regularly unless the computer or Time Machine is turned off.

My Hard Drive was freezing up Finder, a lot of things were getting slower and going haywire for a while and then one day that was it. I couldn't access anything. So I urge you to get a backup drive, or you may lose your files altogether.

I'm guessing that the Restart helped you out. Good luck with your Mac.