Dock Won't Open and Desktop Flashes

Question

When I log in the dock never opens and the desktop continuously flashes. I know exactly what is causing this but have no idea how to fix it.
Basically, there is a corrupt file in my downloads folder so the dock keeps restarting as soon as it opens causing my desktop to flash every time. This loop can be seen happening in the activity monitor.
The catch is that I can't access my downloads folder to delete the corrupt file as whenever I try to open my downloads folder in Finder, Finder will also restart and the window disappears.I have also tried accessing the downloads folder in safe mode but the same thing happens.
I need to find out how I can either delete the downloads folder altogether, or at least delete all files in it without using Finder. I am confident this will fix the problem but I have no idea how to do this.
This is only specefic to my login as I have created another user which works fine. However, I would prefer not to have to start using a whole new login if I can avoid it.
Any assistance would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Step 1
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the name of the crashed application or process in the Filter text field. Select the messages from the time of the last crash, if any. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).
When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.
Step 2
In the Console window, look under User Diagnostic Reports (not "Diagnostic and Usage Messages") for crash reports related to the crashed process. The report name starts with the name of the process, and ends with ".crash". Select the most recent report and post the entire contents — again, the text, not a screenshot. In the interest of privacy, I suggest that, before posting, you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if it’s present (it may not be.) Please don’t post other kinds of diagnostic report — they're very long and not helpful.