[profitclinic]

I'm running Snow Leopard OSX 10.6.2 on a fairly new iMac 24 inch.

The finder began spinning its wheels, so I rebooted rather than force quit. Now the finder can't be opened.

I've tried a restart (hold down C key) using the Snow Leopard DVD, but it ignores it and restarts with no finder.

Any suggestions?

[ClockWork]

What have you got connected to it - by brand name?
Any Drobo External Drives?

[profitclinic]

1. 1 TB Time Capsule (Apple)

2. Epson Stylus Photo 830U printer via Swann 4-way USB port

3. Sony 1GB thumb drive

The problem started when I tried to save a file in Adobe Illustrator. @#$%^&* thing just went feral.

[ClockWork]

It's apparently bugging many people, as noted here on MacFixIt.

You could try removing all external devices and rebooting, or try creating a New User Account, as shown here, step by step.

[profitclinic]

Thanks.

With no finder it was tricky to implement.

What I ended up doing was repairing the hard drive using the disk utility.

That seems to have fixed things — there were several problems needing repair.

Thanks for your help.

[CameronB]

I appreciate you posting your solution, just had this problem on my Snow Leopard machine with many externals connected. Thanks for saving me time!