The finder bounces and will not close or relaunch.

Question

When I power up, the icons in the bar at the bottom appear and the Finder icon starts to bounce. (No other icons appear on screen, just the ones in the bar at the bottom) Theer is a message box on the screen asking if I want to relaunch the finder, but it is flashing on and off and will not let me select it. I can open any program on the icon bar at the bottom and everything works fine, but the Finder icon and message box continue to bounce and flash on and off. When I close all programs, I have no drop down menus at the top. I have to open a program to get a drop down menu to shut the computer off. If I select Force Quit it will allow me to quit the program I am in, but the Finder just keeps flashing on and off. Solution?

Answer 1

The Finder is crashing. Launch the Console application in either 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.)
☞ If you’re running OS X 10.7 or later, open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the page that opens.
Step 1
Enter the name of the crashed application or process in the Filter text field. Post the messages from the time of the last crash, if any — the text, please, not a screenshot.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Edit it out by search-and-replace in a text editor before posting.
Step 2
Still in the Console window, look under User Diagnostic Reports for crash reports related to the process. The report name starts with the name of the crashed process, and ends with ".crash". Select the most recent report and post the 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 shutdownStall or hang logs — they're very long and not helpful.