The Mac and Mac OS X have changed tremendously in their nearly three-decade long existence, but some problems stand the test of time. Finder Error Code 36 has plagued Mac users since the Beige Days:
My girlfriend and I have matching 13″ MacBook Pros (4Gigs RAM and both with ample HDs) and are the same “age”. We both are music nuts and have tons of music and my Mac performs beautifully but her computer has been pausing/stalling (with spinning beach ball) when she plays music on iTunes. This happens mainly, but not limited to, when the screensaver starts up. We took it to the Genius Bar and their solution was to disable the screensaver with a hot corner. I find that solution unacceptable.
Also, and I feel that the problem is related, I have been trying to use Time Machine on her computer or a least back it up and it always errors out. After several attempts I decided to back up all of her personal files manually to eventually reboot the OS but found out that I couldn’t event transfer her music files to an external because after ever 20-50 songs I would get Error Code 36. After some Google researching I learned that this code is the “bummer code” basically saying that an unknown error has occurred.
Do you have any recommendations on why Error 36 is occurring with media files, how to force the backup past EC36, or on cleaning up these bad files?
I would ultimately like to do one of two things, back up computer with Time Machine or manually transfer these songs so that we can fix the persisting music play problem.
Any information would be greatly appreciated.
– derek
Hi Derek,
My first suspicion based on the two concurrent problems is that the hard disk on your girlfriend’s MBP may be failing. Error code 36 can come up for many different reasons, but is often related to disk errors where the Finder can’t read a file correctly. That can indicate a problem with the file(s), or the disk itself.
A few things you can try: DiskWarrior is my first tool of choice for checking disk problems such as these, I highly recommend getting a copy and checking out your drive. You need to run DiskWarrior from another computer or boot drive, or boot off the DW CD, to fix the startup drive. If that isn’t enough to copy the files, I’ve had good luck using cloning utilities like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! to move uncooperative files. If your hard drive is failing it’s also a very good idea to backup what you can now, which these utilities will also accomplish.
The launch of the screensaver involves some disk activity, so this could be related. Try changing the screensaver to something like “Computer Name” so that it doesn’t need to load any graphics from disk, and see if that makes a difference.
