Finder Crashing Problems

[GrisGris]

hey, this is my first time posting on this forum. I have a 2009 macbook pro running lion. recently, my finder has started to randomly crash. all of my icons on the desktop disapear, and i cannot open up any folders, but i can still save images to any folder manually in my browser (i just can't drag them into the desktop). spotlight also works fine.

i'm not sure if there is a connection, but i recently started using a portable hardrive with the computer. i haven't seen any problems with it, and i used it just fine before Finder started acting up. but idk.

once finder crashes, i keep trying to relaunch it / killall Finder in terminal, but it keeps hanging as soon as the indicator appears below it in the dock.

[hayne]

1) Check for relevant messages in the logs by using the "Console" application.

2) Disconnect that portable hard drive and all other peripherals from the MacBook while debugging this issue. Then restart your Mac and see if the problem persists.

3) Sometimes Finder crashes are related to corrupted preview images etc in your files - e.g. those on the Desktop. Try moving all files off of the Desktop into some other folder (for the moment) - obviously you will need to use some other application to do this if Finder is crashing right away. E.g. you could do it in Terminal with a command like:

mkdir ~/Document/SomeFolder
mv ~/Desktop/* ~/Documents/SomeFolder

[anthlover]

It would be good to have a little more info too...
Lion = 10.7x
2009 which Pro
Portable drive which, what type of connection.

*** Would not making another Admin user and navigating to the Appropriate user and desktop folder and copying them elsewhere be easier?

*** Do you have any back ups of your data? It is good to have multiple ones.

If you do not have a back up it might be advisable to get another drive USB2 or 3, Install Lion on it, boot off it and Use Carbon Copy Cloner or Super duper do to back up your internal. It is possible your having hard drive issues rather then file directory issues.

It is also quite possible that the external your using is part of the problem has Hayne suggested.

[GrisGris]

sorry, the computer may be from 2011 i can't really remember and i don't know how to find out, i don't know if it matters. it says macbook pro8 on system profiler. the portable drive is a 1tb seagate backup plus with a few partitions

i attached a pic of the console logs that show up when the problem begins to occur.

usually finder will randomly crash, and i will be unable to open it again because of the hanging. i then need to force shutdown my macbook because logging out/restarting freeze it.

thanks for the advice anthlover. i'll try just making another user account and seeing if that solves it. let me know if the screenshot of my console reveals anything though

[anthlover]

MacBookPro8,1 is Early 2011
Are you using USB with that Seagate Go flex?

*** I agree that portable should be left disconnected for now

Hayne and others can answer better about logs, I believe that is a user error that is displaying.

** Is there data on your computer that is important to you?

Note that your Old your data will be found in
Macintosh HD\Users\Username\Desktop or Documents etc

For many reasons, e.g.. Do To repairs to Disk and Permissions, Install Lion on a new separate external drive you may need to boot off of Apples recovery Partition.

To do so, from when the computer is turned on. Hold down Command-R after the chime (you can also Hold the the Option-key down, which will show all your bootable volumes including Recovery, select with arrow keys and hit enter. Soon the gray linen background appears and the Mac OS X Utilities show up.

As I started mentioning above if you care about your Data it is important to have multiple separate physical back ups on multiple completely separate disks. Preferably using a tool that makes bootable image back ups, Chiefly by using Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Super Duper. Off site back up with something like crash plan (one of the best) does off site file based back to crashplans servers and the data is encrypted, unlimited storage for around $60 a year.