Finder ****ed. Alternative File Manager needed

[return2sendai]

Hi,

Since upgrading to Mojave two months ago, my Finder has been continuously unresponsive. Every day I get this bloody beachball.

I've tried everything.

killall Finder: worked for 20 minutes
Deleting plists: worked for one boot
Not shutting down: worked for 3 days
Deleting caches: worked for about 5 minutes
Booting into Safe Mode, deleting caches and plists: worked for a day
Reinstalling Mojave: worked for a week

I have tried every fix I can find on the inter-web, and there are many because this is a HUMUNGOUS issue.

Again and again and again, the beachball cometh. I'm running a 2016 iMac here, and it handles like a 2CV.

My Finder is ****ed

So, does anyone have an alternative File Manager? Coz I'm damned if I can fix my Finder.

Cheers

 

[S.B.G]

Have you tried creating a brand new user profile and see if the problem persists? It could be a corrupted user profile.

 

[return2sendai]

My wife has a separate user profile on my iMac. She has no problems when logged on. Only my administrator profile is beach balling. Is it possible to create a new administrator profile?

 

[S.B.G]

Yep. Go to Users & Groups and click the + to add a new user and select Administrator for the type.

 

[return2sendai]

OK. Done that. So..... How do I import all my stuff to this new Admin account?

 

[S.B.G]

It'll be a manual process to copy stuff over and setup your accounts. Use Finder to browse to your other account to copy over any files that you don't have in cloud storage. If you have cloud storage, just sign in to them and they'll download automatically.

The idea is to get a fresh start so you don't want to import any bad system files from the other account. Personal files and such shouldn't be a problem to copy over.

 

[return2sendai]

God. I’ve got to set up everything. My iCloud files are already in my new admin account. But I have movies and music, etc in my old admin that I have to copy to my new admin. But I don’t have the space. I have a 2TB iMac, but only 600 GB free space. So I should delete all that stuff and copy over from my TM backup, yes? Then I have to set up new iTunes libraries, new Safari, new everything. And syncing my iPad with this new iTines library! And setting up mail. And downloading all my apps. No way, man. This sucks!

I might just as well nuke the computer, go for a clean install of Mojave, then copy everything I need from my Time Machine backup, right? Is that what this new admin creation effectively means?

 

[S.B.G]

Before you go that far, I'd recommend just getting the immediate essentials copied over that you might need over the next few days just to test out the account. You want to be sure that its a profile issue that is with Finder and not a systemic issue with the Mac itself. Sounds like its a profile issue if your wife isn't having the same problem. But try the new account first for a few days to be certain.

If after that everything appears good, then you'll want to copy stuff over. Restoring from Time Machine in this instance might also copy over the corrupt stuff and put you back in the same position.

What I would do since you don't have enough disk space is to use or buy an external SSD to copy all the stuff you want to keep from you old account to it. Then once you're sure you have it all, then delete the old, corrupt account from the Mac freeing up disk space and then copy back to the new account from the SSD.

When that's all done, you'll also have a new SSD for extra file storage and portability, too.

 

[return2sendai]

Sounds like a plan. Okay. I’ll use the new account for a few days, as you suggest, and see if the Finder issue repeats. I have a blank SSD.

Thanks a bundle. I’ll report back in due course.

 

[saudor]

If it works fine, you can just move all your files to another folder on the same drive where it's accessible from any user account