Preferences folder boots Finder
Some days ago I had to format and reinstall my intire OS because the finder chrashed all the time I deleted the finder.plist, installed with save&install, repaired permissions. Nothing worked.
Now I am on a new OS and the old Preferences folder is on external firewiredisk. How do I move prefernces from this folder to the new one as it chrashes when I try to open it? Or - bether - how do I stop this folder from chrashing my Finder.
I friend of had the same crazy Finder experince yesterday but it was OK when he deleted the finder.plist.
I cant find the chrashlog for Finder in the console either.
I really do appreciate your replies, but I'm not sure I'm following where I went wrong. I started with a pristine SL install, used the setup assistant to copy over documents only, did fresh installs of all applications, and manually recreated all my settings. I thought I was taking the utmost care to avoid bringing any old problems over from my previous machine. Are you saying that letting the migration assistant copy over all my applications and settings would have led to a cleaner system?
Similar Messages
-
How do you find out what application is generating a plist file in your preference folder?
I have had two similar warnings come up in Drive Genius 3, a program that I use to manage my drives. The warnings occur during a daily verification of preferences on my main drive, a 256GB SSD.
They state:
"The preference file at '/Users/me/Library/Preferences/com.analogsolutions.Football.plist' may be corrupted."
"The preference file at '/Users/me/Library/Preferences/org.machinedevelop.National.plist' may be corrupted."
Per Drive Genius' advisement, "Corrupted files can cause appplication crashes and should be moved to the Trash." I delete the files, however they are regenerated each day.
Q: How do you figure out what application is generating a preference file? And is there a way to tell if this is a OS generated preference file?
I have searched online and cannot find any information about either Analog Solutions or Machine Develop nor am I able to discern what these particular .plist files are for...
Q: Are these two .plist files truly potentially harmful?
Thanks for the Help!
iMac
model iMac12,2
3.4 GHz Intel Core i7
8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3Hi Everyone, sorry for the late response. I have been monitoring my Preferences Folder; every moment I am on my computer trying to catch what application/process generates these files. I was hoping to try your suggestions, but oddly enough the offensive .plist files have not returned since the last time I deleted them about a week ago.... strange...
In any case, I have responded to some of your suggestions and questions that I have information on:
X423424X wrote: Ok, can you double click the .plist file? If so it should attempt to launch the Property List Editor (in your Utilities folder). That way you can look at stuff in the plist. Maybe (hopefully) there's something in there that can shed some light on who is creating it. If Property List Editor cannot open the file (some apps create files that have the .plist extension but don't actually create the proper XML format -- probably what ProSoft was alluding to) then try opening it with a text editor.
The .plist file when opened in text editor contains a string of (what to me seems to be) an arbitrary list of numbers.
Linc Davis wrote: Those files have been given obfuscated names so you won't know what created them. They must contain encrypted registration data for some third-party commercial software that you use.
Yes, seems likely...
Linc Davis wrote: It should be fairly easy to find out what application is creating them, if you really care. Move the files to the Desktop, then log out. Log back in while holding the shift key as you click the "Log In" button. That will prevent your login items from loading, among other things. Open your account preferences and launch the login items one at a time by double-clicking them in the list. After each one, check to see whether the files have been recreated.
Ran through login, one by one, no luck in identifying the application(s).
X423424X wrote: Another thought, lock the plists on the hope that whatever is using them will "choke" and complain about it (no guarantee that will work but worth a try).
Thanks, the lock idea is the one I will try next if they ever reappear...
X423424X wrote: Also, I don't recall if I asked this but if those plists are deleted while logged in will they be recreated during that same login session. Or do they only appear after you deleted them and then and then logged out and back in? Or do you have to reboot to recreate them?
Unfortunately I do not know for certain. Though from all my login/startup/reboot tests I believe that they are not directly linked to starting up the machine or loging in either.
I'm not really certain why the .plist have not returned. I haven't uninstalled any programs, though I did run a couple updates for some widgets within the last week; however that was about 3 days after I deleted the last set of .plist files and usually they reappered everyday. In any case, given that they have not been regenerated I guess my problem is solved per se, at least I am no longer getting that annoying warning everyday. Still, it's a bit of a mystery
Thanks again for all the help! -
When I open Safari, it just hangs up. I cant get to the menu to reset and i cannot find the apple.safari.plist folder in the preferences folder. Anyone have any suggestion?
Alright, I figured it out. I found the Preferences.plist in the ~/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration folder. I deleted it and restarted my macbook. Now Safari works!
-
FInder crash when viewing Preferences folder
I am getting a repeatable Finder crash when scrolling through my User/Library/Preferences folder. This happens when in Column view. Finder does not crash when in Icon or List view. I did get one crash when in CoverFlow view, but it took a lot of scrolling back-and-forth to get the crash in that mode.
The accounts on this new iMac were migrated over from an older 2x2 G5 (10.3.9) Not sure if that would have any bearing on this problem, though.
Thanks,
Jimtry resetting finder preferences and removing the .DS_Store file for that folder.
close all finder windows and run the following terminal commands
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit'
rm ~/Library/Preferences/.DS_Store ~/library/preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to launch'
Message was edited by: V.K. -
Opening "Preferences" folder will crash the Finder every time!
On my 24" iMac with OSX 10.6.5, opening User's "Preferences" folder will crash the Snow Leopard Finder every time! This will happen even if I try to open a saved "Preferences" folder on an external drive.
On the brand-new 27" iMac also with OSX 10.6.5, the same thing will happen, but less frequently.
Is there way around this annoying problem???
Thanks for the help!Problem solved thanks to a tip on the internet:
Fetch 4.0.3 preference files were causing the Snow Leopard Finder to crash constantly. Removing the files from both iMacs and the problem went away immediately.
Since I couldn't open the Snow Leopard folder containing the Fetch prefs files long enough to remove them, I used a MacBook, running Leopard to remove the files through the network. -
I have some troubles recently with Final Cut Pro 7 and would like to remove my preferences. I can't find any "com.apple.finalcutpro.plist" file from the Preferences folder but I do have some preferences. So, where could be the file ?
Digital Rebellion has you covered: http://www.digitalrebellion.com/prefman/
-
Can't open Preferences folder, Finder crashes/relaunches
Every time I double-click the User/Library/Preferences folder to open it, the Finder crashes/relaunches and the folder won't open. I can click on the triangle to expand it, but I can't open it by double-clicking. I've tried rebuilding permissions but no help. Any ideas?
Open the Terminal app and type the following: *rm -r ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist*
Reboot the computer and give it a shot then -
how do i show the Library folder in Finder. where can i read about what the Library does and what it holds.
madnaar wrote:
... where can i read about what the Library does and what it holds.
The Library in your home directory is usually where your preferences are stored (mostly in Preferences). This is generally also where other additional data programs create are save Application Support). There's many other folders too for Documents, Movies, personal preference panels, widgets, screen savers, and so on.
Note that there is another Library folder in the boot directory with similar goals but that is for system wide data as opposed to the one in your home directory which is specific to your account only.
There's also a third Library I won't discuss that belongs to the OS. -
Fireworks CS5 wont start up in lion (error in preferences folder)
Ok, after 10 days with out FW CS5 on my new Lion installment. I finally cracked some kind of bug where FW would freeze just after loading and the last text in the CS5 logo was tabs and then the processor would go up to around 81% and just freeze.
Apple and Adobe, both blame each other and none could give an answer, but to re-install everything, which i just had done. (Man the big dudes are lost sometimes!)
"My" problem turned, that I seemlessly had a corrupt file in my ~/Library/Preferences/
But i couldnt figure out which one it was.
I ran a Terminal plutil -s *.plist and no errors showed up.
The solution turned out to be:
Deleted the entire macromedia folder in the ~/Library/Preferences/ folder and now its working.
macromedia is the name of the old FW creators before Adobe took over.
So i am guessing there is some kind of error, but who can tell. I cant, adobe cant and apple cant.
Well hope this helps somebody!Hi Folks!
Its because the macromedia folder is recreated each time flash is used somehow.
I made an Automator App that
1) Locates the ~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia
2) Moves the Macromedia Folder to the Trash
3) Runs Adobe Fireworks CS 4
So all I need to do is click this Automator App instead of the Fireworks App in my Dock, and then I am sure it will start.
(I Know that this is not a 100% cool in the end fix, but seems like Adobe are ignoring this error after several of attempts of direct action to tell them.)
Here is how to build your own automator app that does these three steps for you.
My finder is in danish, but I translated it in red text for you. Guess its easy to figure out:
Remember!!! If you are running Adobe Fireworks CS5 then choose that in step 3 instead :-) -
How do I upload videos from an SD card to the movies folder in Finder on my iMac?
I'm having trouble uploading videos from my SD card to my iMac. I'm wanting to save it in the "Movies" folder in Finder. When I open the SD card on my iMac, I am able to view the videos in QuickTime Player. They were an AVCHD file format. It gave me no option of saving the videos - not even with dragging them. So, I tried moving all of the files versus just one (in other words, instead of opening the file to view all of the videos, I just dragged the whole file without opening it). It saved to my iMac, but in the same way as it was on the SD card - I wasn't able to actually save the videos themselves. They were only able to be viewed with QuickTime Player - I couldn't do anything else with them. So, I took my SD card out of the computer and put it back in the video camera. I then realized than I could not view the videos in the camera - they wouldn't show up. I then plugged the SD card back into the iMac. The videos were now saved under a BDMV folder versus the AVCHD folder they had been under earlier. The AVCHD folder was there, but would not open. When I tried to open it, all it said was, "This operation could not be completed." The BDMV folder allows me to view the videos in QuickTime Player, but I still cannot save them to my iMac from the SD card. I even tried saving the videos to iPhoto by dragging the BDMV folder into iPhoto. All it did was say, "The following files could not be imported. The file is in an unrecognizable format." So, now, I am completely confused as to what I need to do as to save the videos onto my computer, and even how the videos are now saved under a BDMV folder versus the original AVCHD folder in the SD card. I'd greatly appreciate it if someone could help me with this problem. Thanks!
You should have an icon of the SD card on the desktop - do you? If not, go to Finder Preferences > General and make sure these items are checked to show:
Once the icon is showing, you can just drag the card content to your desktop. It depends on what you want to do with the video - just watch or edit in iMovie to share online or burn a DVD? -
How to get trash folder in finder?
How to get trash folder in finder?
Hello Neil,
Here's a challenging adjunct to the physical location of trash question above. I moved home folder of my login to a different partition (data only) which all worked fine. Then I trashed the original home folder which was on the Boot OSX partition (just to be tidy as it was not needed any longer) now the MBA says "cannot logon to this user for the time being". So I clearly need to return the original home directory back from trash to my logon folder (eve though it is not really used).
However, how can I access my original logon user directory in trash when I am unable to logon? Logged on to the root directory and using your go to folder solution above I have found the trash for root but I am unable to find the trash for my actual logon (which contains the trashed home directory)!
Any thoughts sir? Thanks for your help.
pn -
How to remove a computer from my shared folder in Finder?
Just purchased a new iMac. After setting up Wi-Fi network connection, from DSL, now have a unknown computer listed within the shared folder in Finder. Have no idea who this is, but want to remove it. How?
Hi Vonni,
Often people will borrow, piggyback, a network without meaning to do harm. They just want a free internet connection. That being said, would you trust a stranger to plug their computer into your network? The best thing for you to do is read the manual that came with your router and find out how to turn on WPA encryption. Sometimes the router companies have support lines. After this is done, it means that anyone who uses your wireless connection will have to have your network name (AKA "SSID") and password. If you give them the password, they can use your network connection. If not, then they can't. That includes friends and family, when they are at your house for a visit. Giving them the WPA wireless password won't give them access to your computer (unless you use the same password - a bad idea), it will just give them access to your network.
There's no way that I know of to eliminate a computer from your Shared Folder area. That said, it also doesn't mean that they have access to your computer. It might actually mean that you have access to theirs!
To see what they have access to, go to the Apple menu at the top left corner of the screen and start System Preferences. Inside there, you will see "Sharing". If you uncheck all of the boxes in there, there is little that anyone could do.
David -
Problem Application - can't open Applications folder in finder
Dear All,
I went to upgrade an application (Transmission) today, but during the upgrade, my macbook requested to be restarted. I did this, and now whenever that application is encountered in finder, it crashes finder. This means I cannot open the folder in finder, or from my dock. If I search for it using spotlight, it also crashes.
I have tried deleting it through terminal, but when I navigate to the applications folder, and type "ls -l", no contents are listed, though I can still load other applications through spotlight.
Does anyone have any idea what I might be able to do to delete this problem application? I was hoping to just do a system restore using my time-machine backups, but I don't have an install CD, and apparently you can't do that without one of those.
Thank you in advance for any advice!
Tom (UK)tjw62 wrote:
I went to upgrade an application (Transmission) today, but during the upgrade, my macbook requested to be restarted. I did this, and now whenever that application is encountered in finder, it crashes finder. This means I cannot open the folder in finder, or from my dock. If I search for it using spotlight, it also crashes.
Welcome to Apple's discussion groups.
I'd launch the Console utility and look under ~/Library/Logs and /Library/Logs for a CrashReporter item. If you see a Finder crash log in either of those locations, post the contents here and someone may be able to help you decipher what's wrong.
I'd also use Disk Utility to do a "verify disk" operation on your boot drive to see if that reveals anything.
Does anyone have any idea what I might be able to do to delete this problem application? I was hoping to just do a system restore using my time-machine backups, but I don't have an install CD, and apparently you can't do that without one of those.
If all else fails it's probably possible to use commands in the Terminal application to delete the problematic application, but first I'd try the things I suggest above. -
Hi, I'm a newbie to Mac. I would like to know how to filter or designate the "All Image Folder" in Finder to just show "images" in my Picture folder only. When I click on the All Image Folder now, it shows EVERY SINGLE IMAGE that I ever opened, including pictures that I may have received through junk mails and any image within Mac itself. I seem to remember once that it only showed images in my Picture Folder and I'm not sure what I did to make it show the way it is now. When I open that folder, it showls over 10000+ imgages. Real annoying, can someone help me? Thanks.
You just need to create a new smart search folder. Open your folder with images, enter command+F, choose your folder in the search bar at the top (it searches the whole computer by default) and choose the search by kind for all images. then click on the save button on the right and save your search. it will show up in the sidebar at the bottom.
BTW, that default "All Images" smart search folder in the sidebar is really quite useless as you have found out yourself so I would recommend you remove it from the sidebar completely. That's done from the finder preferences.
As Kappy suggests, if your folder has images only you don't need to do this and can simply drag the folder to the sidebar.
Message was edited by: V.K. -
Cannot bring up Finder preferences and general Finder issues in Yosemite
Since installing Yosemite, I've been having multiple issues with the Finder:
Finder seems to hang occasionally when trying to delete a file
Finder seems to hang occasionally when trying to empty the trash
When trying to open the Finder preferences, it either doesn't open or opens a blank panel (with nothing in it)
Looking at the Console when trying to opening the Finder prefs, I can see this Exception being logged:
Jan 11 16:15:15 JasonMBPRetina Finder[260]: An uncaught exception was raised
Jan 11 16:15:15 JasonMBPRetina Finder[260]: *** -[__NSArrayI objectAtIndex:]: index 0 beyond bounds for empty array
Jan 11 16:15:15 JasonMBPRetina Finder[260]: (
0 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff899b864c __exceptionPreprocess + 172
1 libobjc.A.dylib 0x00007fff8bfe66de objc_exception_throw + 43
2 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff8989174e -[__NSArrayI objectAtIndex:] + 190
3 AppKit 0x00007fff8d931e59 _NSAccessibilityEntryPointValueForAttribute + 1823
4 AppKit 0x00007fff8d4b8296 NSAccessibilityChildren + 41
5 AppKit 0x00007fff8d4b8246 NSAccessibilityUnignoredChildrenForOnlyChild + 98
6 AppKit 0x00007fff8d4b815c NSAccessibilityUnignoredDescendant + 27
7 AppKit 0x00007fff8d4b80e2 -[NSNibAXAttributeConnector establishConnection] + 74
8 AppKit 0x00007fff8d90cf66 -[NSIBObjectData nibInstantiateWithOwner:options:topLevelObjects:] + 1065
9 AppKit 0x00007fff8d41ef05 loadNib + 384
10 AppKit 0x00007fff8d98cf80 +[NSBundle(NSNibLoading) _loadNibFile:nameTable:options:withZone:ownerBundle:] + 313
11 AppKit 0x00007fff8d98d67d +[NSBundle(NSNibLoadingInternal) _loadNibFile:externalNameTable:options:withZone:] + 150
12 AppKit 0x00007fff8d65efed -[NSWindowController loadWindow] + 313
13 AppKit 0x00007fff8d664684 -[NSWindowController window] + 80
14 Finder 0x0000000101dc5a14 Finder + 1604116
15 Finder 0x0000000101dc59e5 Finder + 1604069
16 libsystem_trace.dylib 0x00007fff88d74cd7 _os_activity_initiate + 75
17 AppKit 0x00007fff8d60a497 -[NSApplication sendAction:to:from:] + 410
18 AppKit 0x00007fff8d6245da -[NSMenuItem _corePerformAction] + 382
19 AppKit 0x00007fff8d6242f7 -[NSCarbonMenuImpl performActionWithHighlightingForItemAtIndex:] + 114
20 libsystem_trace.dylib 0x00007fff88d74cd7 _os_activity_initiate + 75
21 AppKit 0x00007fff8d671b96 -[NSMenu performActionForItemAtIndex:] + 131
22 AppKit 0x00007fff8d671b06 -[NSMenu _internalPerformActionForItemAtIndex:] + 35
23 AppKit 0x00007fff8d671952 -[NSCarbonMenuImpl _carbonCommandProcessEvent:handlerCallRef:] + 107
24 AppKit 0x00007fff8d619eeb NSSLMMenuEventHandler + 724
25 HIToolbox 0x00007fff9593e32c _ZL23DispatchEventToHandlersP14EventTargetRecP14OpaqueEventRefP14HandlerCallRec + 1260
26 HIToolbox 0x00007fff9593d76e _ZL30SendEventToEventTargetInternalP14OpaqueEventRefP20OpaqueEventTargetRefP14HandlerCallRec + 386
27 HIToolbox 0x00007fff95952286 SendEventToEventTarget + 40
28 HIToolbox 0x00007fff95987795 _ZL18SendHICommandEventjPK9HICommandjjhPKvP20OpaqueEventTargetRefS5_PP14OpaqueEventRef + 428
29 HIToolbox 0x00007fff959bae8d SendMenuCommandWithContextAndModifiers + 59
30 HIToolbox 0x00007fff959bae34 SendMenuItemSelectedEvent + 188
31 HIToolbox 0x00007fff959bad06 _ZL19FinishMenuSelectionP13SelectionDataP10MenuResultS2_ + 96
32 HIToolbox 0x00007fff959c28b1 _ZL14MenuSelectCoreP8MenuData5PointdjPP13OpaqueMenuRefPt + 702
33 HIToolbox 0x00007fff959c249e _HandleMenuSelection2 + 446
34 AppKit 0x00007fff8d59fd1e _NSHandleCarbonMenuEvent + 277
35 AppKit 0x00007fff8d43ba40 _DPSNextEvent + 1843
36 AppKit 0x00007fff8d43ae80 -[NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 194
37 AppKit 0x00007fff8d42ee23 -[NSApplication run] + 594
38 AppKit 0x00007fff8d41a2d4 NSApplicationMain + 1832
39 Finder 0x0000000101c43960 Finder + 22880
40 libdyld.dylib 0x00007fff8c2045c9 start + 1
41 ??? 0x0000000000000001 0x0 + 1
Can anyone help?Do a backup.
Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library. Then go to Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist. Move the .plist to your desktop.
Re-launch Finder by restarting and test. If it works okay, delete the plist from the desktop.
If the same, return the .plist to where you got it from, overwriting the newer one.
Thanks to leonie for some information contained in this.
Maybe you are looking for
-
URLEneQuery encoding is failing for some non english characters
While creating a URLEneQuery we are getting error com.endeca.navigation.InternalException: No support for 8-bit urls. This error happens when the query string has some non english characters. (eg: Á).
-
I have the problem that other have had, PDFs changing to Firefox icons
All my PDFs had changed to Firefox icons and when trying to open them only the Firefox browser page appeared and I could not locate my files. Uninstalling Firefox worked fine, my files returned. One person mentioned imported profiles from an old comp
-
What to do if Final Cut Express was installed after Aperture, on a new MaBook Pro Retina running OS X 10.7.4?
-
Keypad and Internet Freeze on eBay page, shut Wifi needed to restore Safari
(this is a repost from the iPhone 4 Category http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2491425&tstart=15 ; I think Internet and Networking looks like a better category. sorry I didn't notice this category first) This is totally repeatable (se
-
HP Elitebook 6930p High Pitched Sound
I recently bought a HP 6930p and love it, the only issue is that when it is on, I am getting a high pitched noise coming out of the back left side. The fan works, and the sound is definitly not coming from that. The sound reduces greatly when I am