A workaround for constant Finder crashes after login

Jul 30, '07 07:30:02AM

Contributed by: tom larkin

I have had this same problem occur quite a bit in the last couple of months at my work, where I support many Mac labs and Mac laptops. I have seen this on several machines where you log in and the Finder just crashes and you get the spinning beach ball of death. If you log into a new user account (we have hidden accounts for diagnosis and administrative use), the OS runs absolutely fine. So you immediately think it is a problem with the user account. You do all the standard troubleshooting of clearing out .plist files, caches, application data, temp files, etc. However the problem persists.

While troubleshooting this issue, I decided to enable fast user switching (FUS) so I could log back into my admin account to make system changes in a timely manner. I noticed once I enabled fast user switching and switched from my working account to the account in question, all was suddenly well again. I have duplicated this method on several other machines at work, too. These range from intel iMacs, G4 to G5 desktops, G4 iBooks, G4 powerbooks, Macbooks, and Macbook Pros.

So if anyone runs into this issue where all the standard troubleshooting methods do not work, log into a different user account, enable FUS, and then switch from a good known user, then switch to the user in question and then it works. I have no idea why this works, but it works and saved me from having to target mode and back up data and reimage because the user forgot to back up their data on the network drive.

[robg adds: I can't test this one, but it seems there must still be a user-related issue at work if the Finder is crashing on login. As a temporary fix, FUS may get the job done, but the bigger issue will still need to be resolved.]

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