Finder Windows Will Not Close

Question

I have strange behaviour appearing since I have been using Snow Leopard, and it manifests itself on at least three different Macs. I cannot find any references to it, but I intermittently have Finder windows that stay open (I cannot close them, either with the button, the Close Window command or the command-W key combination). If I log out and in again, I am able to close them, and I am also able to do it by force-quitting Finder (though once that managed to fail to restart the Finder at all, so I don't like doing that - I then started to just leave the "extra" windows open - I don't think I have ever ended up with more than two "stuck" windows). It doesn't happen to all windows, only some of them, and I have not yet been able to work out why they get "stuck". I run my Finder with the sidebar turned off, but sometimes turn it on temporarily using the keyboard to go to another computer (on our "network" of connected Macs at home). I tend to have several Finder windows open at once, using command double click to open additional ones. I am not sure, but I think the windows may get stuck when I command click the sidebar to open Finder windows showing details of other computers. No matter where I navigate to in the window once it is open, using the sidebar or not, I still cannot close it. When I try to close it, I can see the close button flash in the top left-hand corner of the window, but it doesn't close. The Close command on the menus is visible (not greyed-out) but also just makes the corner flash before failing to close the window.
Does anyone know how to shut the windows down without force-quitting the Finder? Has anyone else got similar behaviour? It is the way I use the Finder? Has anyone reported this? I could not find any similar mentions of this on the discussion forums or in any of the Support section of the Apple site.

Answer 1

OK, I have tried deleting the plists suggested, which actually doesn't fix it. I have also managed to find a process that seems to "break" it on Snow Leopard. The process is as follows:
• Have your Finder windows set up so that the sidebar is not shown.
• With one Finder window active, press commandaltS to open the side bar.
• Command-click on a different computer on the list (in my trial, this was a different Mac also running Snow Leopard with sharing active and me accessing it as a logged-in user with the login details already present in my Keychain) and it opens a new window with that Finder selection with the sidebar active.
• In that new window, press commandaltS to close the sidebar.
• Click on the "original" window to make it active.
• Press commandaltS to close the sidebar.
• Click back on the "new" Finder window and double click on the user folder that you are logged in as.
• Double-click on a folder within this.
Sometimes when I do this, the Finder will appear to crash out and restart (at least all the windows disappear and re-appear), and other times, this "new" window will now not close at all without restarting the Finder.
It seems a bit of a long way around, but since I don't like the sidebar cluttering up the real estate on my desktop, and I want separate windows open to copy things between different Macs in my house, I tend to do this sequence a lot, and hadn't realised this was causing the Finder windows to "stick".
Can anyone else replicate this with Snow Leopard? In other words, is it something specific about the set-up in my house, or is it more generic? I have done this with three Macs in my house, but I am not sure if it is something about my home network or something else about how I have them set up that is causing it.