Jul

Finder Context Menu Messed Up

Written by Randy on 16 July 2011.

Last week I had a real ugly problem with one of our clients Mac. He used a haxie on Finder and it wasn't really all what he expected from it so he uninstalled it. A haxie is supposed to give extra (hacked) features to applications, this haxie made it possible to customize the Finders right click menu or context menu's

The problem was, after he uninstalled the haxie, he got a dual language Finder, some parts where in Dutch and others in English. All he's language settings where correct.

The solution was rather simple, but the way to it took me some time. First I tried the common tests like permissions or corrupt .pref files, but those where not the case. After a bit more searching for problems but not really finding anything I did the following:

I went to a different Mac with the same version of OSX. Then I went to where Finder.app is located on the computer.

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app

I copied Finder.app to an USB stick. Then on the problematic Mac I booted from Single User Mode (CMD + S after the startup tone.). You need to boot from Single User Mode because you need to override the Finder.app, which can not be done when Finder is running. So when in Single User, just copy and override Finder.app from USB to LocalDisk. And Done. You can use the "mv" command for moving files. For example:

sudo mv /Volumes/USBSTICKNAME/Finder.app/ ~/System/Library/CoreServices/

If you feel uncomfortable using Single User Mode and Terminal commands you can try booting from a different disk or OS. If you have Bootcamp you can use that but you have to keep in mind that you'll need a Windows program like Macdrive. Without it you can't see the Mac formatted disk, let alone edit it's content. You could also try using Target Disk Mode and another Mac, but you'll need a Firewire connection between the two. A last option is using an external USB drive or stick with OSX on and booting from that drive to override the files on the main disk.