no desktop icons and finder doesnt seem to work...please help

[sammsousa]

hello guys and gals, i could really apreciate some tips here as im completly lost. ill try to be as descriptive as possible
i have been running yosemite for 2/3 days on a mid 2012 imac.
everything was working ok since the upgrade, but recently i had to do a 'hardcore shutdown' by keeping the power button pressed because i couldnt close vlc player. the next time i turned on my computer it took for ever to boot and after entering the password it takes forever to show the main top bar, the icons on the desktop dont show up at all, i cant open finder or any other folders and when i hover my mouse anywhere over the desktop it just shows my the busy sign. after searching on this a bit, the only thing i found that came close to my problem, they suggested to press cmd+option+esc to relaunch finder (wich does say 'not responding') but that didnt help at all.
so does anybody have any suggestions?
just in case anybody would want to suggest time machine, i cant use it because i just heard about it when i upgraded to yosemite for the first time, so unfortenatly i dont have it set up, and other then that, i really cant think of anything else...
so if somebody has some info, please do share
samuel

 

[chscag]

Try starting your iMac in recovery mode: Restart and hold down your command and R keys at the same time. That will boot the machine to recovery. Once in recovery, select Utilities, and then select Disk Utility. Verify the hard drive. If it verifies OK, reboot the machine. Let's see if it boots to your desktop normally.

 

[chas_m]

You probably powered down the computer while the drive was being written to, and subsequently corrupted the directory.

A couple of things you can try:

1. Boot the machine holding the command key and R at the same time. You will eventually arrive at the Recovery Partition. Use Disk Utility from there to repair the drive and repair disk permissions. If you're lucky, that will fix it.

2. If not, try booting into either the guest account or into safe mode (accomplished by holding SHIFT for a long time on bootup). See if either of those work normally.

3. If that doesn't work, let us know and we'll move into the more complicated options.

 

[sammsousa]

thanks for the reply! i did what you said and it did not detect any problems, but it still wont run correctly maybe any other ideas?

 

[MacsWork]

Can you create a second Admin user account and login with that account? Does the problem follow the new account?

 

[sammsousa]

yes!!! i did another admin account and over there everything works great. so where do i go from here? there has to be something in the main account messing everything up right?

 

[vansmith]

I doubt that this will be the fix all you're looking for but a simple start, since this is user account specific, would be to remove Finder's plist file. Go to Finder (Command - N) while logged into the broken account > Go (while holding down option) > Library > Preferences. Find the "com.apple.finder.plist" file and move it somewhere else (for now). Reboot. What happens if you do this?

 

[johnodd4]

Question how much ram.

it sounds like your having the ram hog issue that happened in the beta the computer would basically use 3 gigs of ram total and start logging icons and programs and give users blank screen or desktop i would recommend a reinstall

 

[sammsousa]

thanks for the input!!

@vansmith i cant do that, because when im in the main / broken account, i cant open finder (or any other folder)... not even when pressing cmd+n

@johnodd4 i didnt understand exactly what you said, but i have 8 gbs of ram, if thats what you mean,..

 

[johnodd4]

then it's not your memory your computer has enough the issue i was referring to was the o.s loads entirely into memory and eats 4 to 5 gig's of ram on your computer causing slow loading times and items missing

 

[MacInWin]

johnodd4, your posts would be more readable (and helpful) if you would add some punctuation and sentence structure.

sammsousa, open System Preferences, look at Users & Groups, your account, login items and remove all items by selecting and then clicking on the "-" at the bottom of the right side window. That action will disable all softer you are currently loading at your own login. Now log out and back into your own account. IF, and I mean IF, the problem is with one of the startup items there, it will go away. You can then add them back again, one at a time, until it reappears and you've nailed the culprit.

 

[sammsousa]

thanks macinwin for the reply!!
sadly i think the problem is not related with the software loading right at start up. i disabled all of them and the problem remais...

 

[MacInWin]

How did you "disable" the login apps? I ask because you have to DELETE them from the list in Systems Settings to not have them start. IF they are unchecked, they launch, hidden. If that is what you did, you didn't disable them, you just hid them.

 

[sammsousa]

i did it like you said. pressing the '-' button. the list is empty now...

 

[MacInWin]

OK, now reboot and see if the problem goes away.

 

[sammsousa]

i cant to a proper shut down or restart because the mouse just keeps showing me the busy sign and nothing happens. but after i forced the poweroff and booted it back up, the problem was still there.

 

[MacInWin]

Sorry, I don't understand that post. What do you mean "the mouse just keeps showing me the busy signal?" Hard powering off may have created even more problems. Avoid that whenever you can.

 

[sammsousa]

i mean, whenever i hover the mouse over the desktop, or when i try to shut down or restart my computer, it always shows me the busy icon ( http://images.macworld.com/images/howto/graphics/151583-ssbod_188_original.jpg ) and nothing else happens. hard powering off is the only way for me to turn it off right now

 

[MacInWin]

AH, that's called the "Beachball" or the SBOD, the "Spinning beachball of death." It means the system is busy. Normally, it's caused by some runaway application hogging the machine, or the system waiting for some application to respond.

By being OK for another Admin user you've eliminated the hardware as a potential culprit, so it HAS to be something in YOUR account. Have you installed any "helper" applications to "improve" Finder, or desktop or anti-virus, or clean up or anything at all like that?

 

[sammsousa]

the SBOD? lmfao! i didnt know that.
yes i also thought that it wasnt the hardware after doing another account, but what confuses me is that it keeps showing me the beachball when nothing is open. i wanted to uninstall some apps, starting with vlc since i think it was the one that started it all, but i cant access the apps folder (or any other folder) to do so...not to mention vlc player works fine now!

and honestly i dont know what you mean with 'helper' application. and no i dont have an anti-virus... nevert hought i needed one on mac