Mac Finder windows aren't active & can't close

Question

I'm using Mac OSX 10.9.5

Problem:

When I click my Finder windows, they come to the front, but aren't active. Meaning I can't close or minimize them. I also can't click on anything inside them. When I right-click on a desktop icon & select "Reveal in Finder", nothing happens. When I do a spotlight search, and select "Show All in Finder", it opens a new Finder window which works for a few seconds and then stops working (can't close, can't click, can only move window around). My other programs work ok. I haven't downloaded any mods for Finder.

Attempts:

• I've tried relaunching Finder & restarting my computer, and when logging back in Finder will work for a few seconds, and then stop.
• I force quite cfprefsd in Activity Monitor, and then deleted the finder preferences com.apple.finder.plist file, and restarted (works for a few sec, then stops working).
• I tried logging out of my account and logging in as a Guest User, and Finder works fine! So it's seems like something with my user account.

Solution

I had the same problem. This article pointed me toward turning off file sharing services to see if it helps and it turned out Google Drive was the culprit for me. What I did to diagnose the source of error:

1. Quit Google Drive (or any other application that might do work on files in the background, the important thing is to check them one by one)
2. Force quit Finder in Activity Monitor
3. Open Finder and see if problem has disappeared. If not, repeat from step 1 with another application.

If you still want Google Drive running, check out this article for advice. For me it works when I disable the Drive Sync Icon.

Comments

[Tetsujin]

10.9 had a buggy Dock. Does force-quitting that at least work for a while? killall -KILL Dock from Terminal

[Colin Stewart]

Nope, no effect on Finder I'm afraid.

[Tetsujin]

I'd be tempted to try apple.stackexchange.com/questions/243290/… as a generic 'fix' & see what happens. Report back in comments with @[myname] so I get a notification

[Colin Stewart]

Success! Quitting Google Drive & relaunching finder did the trick, thanks a ton! I will try your 2nd article to see if I can get Google Drive to work correctly. Thank you!

[fo747]

Great to hear and thanks for posting the question. Hopefully our joint effort will help others too.

[R. Mohan]

simply i quit the gmail, it started working.