Mac OS X keeps switching back to Finder spontaneously -- fix

MacFixIt reader John Talmadge reports an issue where the Finder spontaneously forces itself to the foreground while working in other applications.

John writes:

"The problem: for some reason the G5 would return to the Finder about every 60-90 seconds, leaving whatever application I had running, whether it was Entourage, Safari, Explorer, or even Activity Monitor.

"I did not notice any slowing or other problems. It was like a little switch was thrown, and there I was again, back in 'Finder' instead of the application that was now shadowed out in the background. When I would return to the app it would work fine, but a minute later, -poof- I would be back in the Finder.

"I tried a lot of things, like disabling Widgets and whatever else I could think of."

John later found that performing a deep system cache purge with Tiger Cache Cleaner resolved the issue.

He writes:

"Then I saw the comment in MacFixIt, bless you all, that suggested for some problems the little ten dollar tool Tiger Cache Cleaner might help. So before giving it the ultimate and using DiskWarrior I bought Tiger Cache Cleaner and tried it. Apparently this fixed the problem."

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

Resources