I am very new to all of this. Today I came across the issue of my Finder not responding. I was wondering why the finder was moving so slow, dragging and spinning the beachball for simple tasks such as moving a folder, or opening a folder, and highlighting available documents that were eligible for use. (they were greyed out). So all of a sudden, the Finder just quit all together. It would not close, so I did the following. Tried to relaunch several times, and it did, and froze almost immediately again. So, I logged out, logged in with new user and had same issue. I booted in safe mode, issue persisted. I deleted the plist, via terminal and once when the finder was accessible, it comes back for a few moments sometimes. Both of these actions were followed by a reboot. I also went to the Activity Monitor, and located the finder, (not responding in red text and X the process. Several efforts and that too failed to fix the situation.
Last, I read 30-40 different blog posts on how to fix the issue but they all said one or two things (which I have already done) and they failed to help. I did find one thing that I think in the right hands someone would know how to determine the issue. While in Activity monitor I noticed the settings Icon, clicked on it and tried the Sample Process. It gave me a detailed report which I browsed through but couldn't make sense of.
So, with that out of the way. I am desperate to fix still. Additionally, I had to uninstall Chrome as it started crashing each time I opened it I downloaded a fresh copy and tried to install, and I was told the disk image couldn't open because the resource was busy. Unsure if that is related.
I have an iMac, running OS X 10.15.4 (Catalina) I have 800 GB remains on my hard drive. And I have cleaned the RAM caches deleted all junk and and i'm out of options.
If someone could please help that would be great. Thank you so much.
Best Answer
just thought I would answer with my resolution to the issue in the event that anyone else experiences this bizarre issue.
So, I was running the 1TB HD drive that came with the 2014 iMac 14.1 OS X presently 10.4.1. I have 8GB RAM, and I would've sworn I that the issues was that. But at that moment, not having the ability to just swap out the RAM, I looked for alternate measures that would help me in a more immediate manner. I read a few articles, and tried various terminal commands. I reset, and restarted a few times holding various keyboard keys each time. Still nothing, even after deleting and reinstalling Chrome. Finder quit working, and wouldn't even load at times. So I read something on GIT hub, didn't quite get how to disable a bunch of Apple $(%*# via Terminal Script to allow for faster processing. I couldn't figure out everything so I asked someone to run it and they asked me why, briefly, tired of explaining myself, I only stated that my computer is ferociously slow. I said why I thought it RAM, because of the limited availability consistently being 10 Mbs. I was told I should look at the SWAP. I read and learned about it and my SWAP at its height 900% that I saw. This resulted me being in need of a better, faster hard drive. An SSD. For immediate results I would have to look into something called Clean My Max X. This was amazing, I didn't want to pay for it, but I ended up buying for $27. It was pretty good, It resolved whatever issue I have enough but not completely so that I could ruction at maybe 70% which was a 70% improvement also. Then then head Drive SSK 1TB came, I replaced and I have literally one of the fasted computers I've used in awhile. Id have to say it is compatible with my 2019 MacBook Pro. So, in conclusion, it was definitely the Hard Drive.
I wish the bestie you are to dealing with this issue. Take Care and Good Luck to you.