Cannot find Finder help please

I was helping a friend today. I installed Leopard for her successfully last week on a Powermac G4. I installed a LaCie d2 Quadra 500GB backup drive and today I partitioned into 3 volumes. Backed everything up with Carbon Copy Cloner. and everything worked well. At the end, I ran Software Update which installed updates for Quicktime and iTunes.

Thats when the problems started. First, Spotlight started indexing all the backup volumes. I tried to stop that but couldn't. Then Finder was not responding, I tried to relaunch but it did not help. All I get is the coloured beachball. The dock is there, the applications work, but no Finder.

I booted from CDs, ran Verify Disk and all was fine. Tried to run Verify Permissions, and that was taking a long time (This seems to be a Leopard problem in general)

I read online that this operation below in Terminal works, but I am not sure exactly how to type it as I have not used Terminal before. I also don't know if this is the right solution. Do I type exactly as it is below or without the quotation marks. I typed it without the quotation marks.

sudo mv "/Library/Application Support/DivXNetworks" "/Library/Application Support/DivXNetworks.prev"

I also read something about deleting the Finder Preference Files, but I dont know how to do that.

Thanks for your help.

Thanks for your help.

This is my take on this naftalim and hopefully someone else will jump in here to verify this ....

Since the command has sudo at the beginning I suggest logging into an Admin Account as a regular account doesn't have the permissions and privileges needed to execute those commands.

Next, launch Terminal (in Finder, press Command + U to launch the Utilities folder where you'll find Terminal) then type the following exactly as written:


to execute this command press enter. You will be asked to enter your Admin Password.

Next type the following:


Once again, press enter to execute the command and enter the Admin Password to continue.

A word of warning. When using sudo, please take care to look at what you've typed and check the letters/spacing before pressing enter.

Now, on to the Finder Preferences. You'll find them here:

Macintosh HD ~> Library ~> Preferences ~> com.apple.finder.plist

Delete this file then log out/back in. New Finder Prefs will be created when you are logged back in.

Thanks, I had to use Spotlight to get to Terminal. I will try this later tonight.