finder keeps appearing/trend micro restarts..?

Hello everyone!

I'm experiencing a situation where finder will keep coming up in the top window…i don't know the terminology.. say I have safari open and I'm surfing the web or here typing this, you can see Safari up in the top left hand corner of the mac indicating that you are currently in safari. After some time the top bar will say Finder up instead of Safari. If I have a finder window open somewhere on the desktop, or minimized in the dock, it will come up to the front of the desktop as if I clicked on the finder icon in the dock and it loaded.

When this happens I can sometimes see the icon for Trend Micro Smart Surfing/anti virus etc. will flicker as if it is restarting or something. Occasionally (not all the time, but once in awhile) when this happens Trend Micro will ask for my password.

As I sat here typing this, suddenly I had an idea.
So I decided to search google for "Trend Micro keeps restarting on mac" the first result was this:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19042643#19042643
On that page the poster is discussing a similar thing that happened to me. I upgraded to 10.8.5 (I'm guessing that's Lion for my build) and afterwards Trend Micro begin this restarting thing.
Now I'm not sure if that has anything to do with my situation, but it's similar although there's no mention of anything going on with finder.
Just as I was typing this finder has came up in the top lefthand corner of the screen twice, thus making me have to click on the text window to continue typing.

Someone on another forum directed me here:
http://intermarketing.merkados.com/finder-problems-mac-os-x-lion-finder-keeps-restarting-solution
and after five days of backing up onto this new external hard drive (the first backup takes forever) i tried entering that code into terminal and it told me something about not being able to delete ; or +… but nothing else happened..

After some googling I came across the idea of looking at Console and seeing what's happening in an activity log. I have no idea what I'm looking at, but in the system.log area I can see a lot has been happening.. perhaps this could provide some insight, after the finder situation happening maybe I could examine the log and it could tell me what's going?

Thank you very much for taking the time to check this out and possible help me figure out this problem.

Remove Trend Micro. You don't need it anyway as long as you stay away from pirate sites and sites that use and promote "file sharing". Go to the Trend Micro site and get the instructions for properly uninstalling it. Just don't drag it to the Trash or it may not be completely removed and still cause the Finder to pop up.

oh wow thank you so much for the immediate reply chscag!

I have my macbook pro wirelessly connected to my router and that has my desktop windows computer on it. I use it for graphic image editing, sound production & music file transfers & I can access them on my Mac, is there any possible problems there such as my mac catching something off my windows pc through that router/internet access? Also, I haven't used it really on my laptop, but I was planning on utilizing the soulseek music transferring client more on my laptop sometime here in the future, would my mac be at any risk from using that?

I don't bother with pirating websites or anything like that, but once in awhile I've seen Trend Micro popping up on the right hand side of my laptop saying it has blocked a website for my safety because its a "known hacker/bad" website. They've only popped up for some .vst websites while I'm searching for new digital synthesizers & whatnot, so the websites aren't actually bad, it has just popped up a few times saying that.

I've known about macs being somewhat immune from viruses & whatnot but would there be anything I should get to run a virus check/ad blocker type thing I should have? I've seen a few things in the app store, but I can't tell which one I actually need..

Again, thank you so much for your help!

I just recently found this page: https://discussions.apple.com/message/22398321#22398321

I read that the mac can essentially look after itself (somewhat) due to its built in protection capabilities, so this Trend Micro thing is pretty pointless. Not that I doubted you, I'm just saying this is further proof that you're right.

As I give a quick glance through that system log, i see Trend Micro in there a few times… I sure hope that removing it will be the solution to this Finder issue and it won't pop up any more & Trend Micro won't be restarting itself.

I suppose I'll go grab a slice of key lime pie, run my installation disc & uninstall Trend Micro, then play Minecraft to pass the time as I wait to see if Finder will pop up again. While playing Minecraft the game will pause whenever that Finder thing happens..

forest_wizard said:

I read that the mac can essentially look after itself (somewhat) due to its built in protection capabilities, so this Trend Micro thing is pretty pointless.

Click to expand...

It's a bit of both - TM is probably overzealous (nothing sells better than fear) but at the same time, OS X can handle some but certainly not all malware thrown at it. Just play it safe and you'll probably be fine (you seem like a reasonable browser).

vansmith said:

It's a bit of both - TM is probably overzealous (nothing sells better than fear) but at the same time, OS X can handle some but certainly not all malware thrown at it. Just play it safe and you'll probably be fine (you seem like a reasonable browser).

Click to expand...

I thank you good sir for your compliment. I do believe myself to be quite level headed when it comes to my internet surfing leisure time.

Haha sorry, the top hatted man in your avatar prompted the astute fancy man talk.

The situation appears as though it was Trend Micro causing the issues with Finder & all that restarting nonsense. There hasn't been any "restarting" or Finder popping up in the top corner of the screen since removing Trend Micro last night.

Im so grateful for your help Chscag, thank you for guiding me right with this. I have been fretting for the past few weeks now that I could lose my laptop. Now with all that has happened, my macbook pro is working in tip top shape again, I have a nice new 2TB external hard drive that keeps time machine back ups of all my data, and I am confident that in the event of an emergency I know which forum to go to first for help.

Thanks again!