Re: Warning: Infinite Loop While Walking Icon List

[dempson@atlantis.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <4bulcl$ciq@news.wizard.com>,
Phaedrus <phaedrus@snark.wizard.com> wrote:
> I have been getting this message quite often lately and the the system
> crashes when I hit the return key. 
> Could someone please enlighten me as to the meaning of this message

When a disk is mounted by Finder, all of the icons on the disk are
loaded and placed into a linked list structure (this can take a
considerable amount of time if you have a lot of icons). 

When performing actions that require scanning the icon list, Finder
checks to see whether the list has been damaged, by looking for a loop
in the list structure (in simplified terms, it should be a straight
line, with an end marker).

If this happens, it either means that Finder has a bug, or that memory
has been corrupted, and one of the icon list pointers doesn't point to
the right place any more.

The latter is more likely.  The corruption is likely to extend to
other areas, and Finder itself has probably made things worse while
traversing the damaged icon list.

> and what causes it and how I might make a correction so that it
> doesn't happen again.

It could be caused by a buggy INIT, Finder extension, desk accessory,
Control Panel, etc. stepping on memory that it doesn't own.  It could
be a bug in the operating system, toolbox or Finder itself.  It could
also be due to a hardware problem (memory card fault, accelerator
problem, DMA problem, heat, etc.)

Try shift-booting and seeing if the problem has gone away.  If so, you
may have a buggy extension.
-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand