David,
Do this at your own risk. I'm wonderring if his system is indexing things
with spotlight, and thus, is unresponsive. I had another guy on this list
who will be left unsaid, who had this issue, and I was able to solve it on
his machine by doing this.
Let's disable spotlight indexing, and see if that helps. Again, do this at
your own risk. You won't break anything doing it, don't worry, but it's
more just do you wanna go to this extreme.
If you can get it to somehow open, open up terminal.
Now, in terminal, type this in exactly. this is case sensitive, so be
careful.
sudo launchctl unload -w
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
Then hit enter.
Now, if prompted, type the admin password, and hit enter again.
Now, hit command+Q to quit Terminal.
Reboot the machine.
Now see what happens.
Here's another suggestion.
While his system is turned off, have him press and hold down
command+option+P+R. now while holding those 4 keys down, turn the system
on, and wait until you hear the startup chime for the fifth time. Once this
is done, release all 4 of the keys at the same time, and wait for the system
to boot up normally.
If you later decide to re-enable spotlight indexing, again, beware it may be
sluggish for a while, but, open up terminal, then type
sudo launchctl load -w
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
Then hit enter. Type your admin password if needed, then hit enter again.
Now hit command+Q to quit Terminal, then reboot.
If this doesn't work, we can try resetting the smc.
1.. Shut down the computer.
Plug in the MBA's power adapter to a power source, connecting it to the Mac
if its not already connected.
On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys
and the power button at the same time.
Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.
If this doesn't work, finally, let's see if we can get someone sighted, as
you won't be able to use Voiceover at this point, but let's turn off the
system, hit the left shift key, and hold it down while powerring on the
system. Then release the shift key after about 6 or 7 seconds.
This will force the system into safe mode. Once here, do your documents, or
whatever you were doing before that made the finder go busy. See if with
Voiceover not running, while it is in safe mode if it visually is
responsive, or is it hanging there, too.
If so, let us know, and we'll go from there.
Chris.
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