What you're seeing is the Finder trying to reconcile its view of open folders with the underlying reality of the UNIX filesystem. Since filesystem objects can be created or destroyed without the Finder's knowledge (for example with the 'rm' command), the Finder must periodically scan all open folders. If the modification date on the directory is more recent than the Finder's last "sync" of the folder, the Finder must re-read the directory contents to find out what's really there. By default, this re-sync occurs every 10 seconds. Unfortunately, this can be a performance problem for folders on NFS servers.
All is not lost however. The sync delay is a resource in the Finder, and you can change it with ResEdit. To change this value, do the following from within MAE:
1) Open your System Folder, select "Finder", and choose Duplicate from the
File menu (this creates "Finder copy").
2) Drop "Finder copy" on ResEdit.
3) Double-click the "fval" icon in the ResEdit window.
4) Double-click resource number 128.
5) At offset 0x32, there should be a "000A". Double-click this and change
it to some greater number. For example, changing it to "0040" will cause
the Finder to perform its sync every 64 seconds.
6) Choose Quit from the File menu and answer Yes to the "Save?" dialog.
7) Create a new folder and move the current Finder into it.
8) Rename "Finder copy" to "Finder".
9) Select Shutdown from the Special menu.
From your shell, do the following:
rm ~/System\\ Folder/Preferences/Finder\\ Preferences*
When MAE is restarted, the new Finder sync delay should be in effect. Be aware that increasing the Finder's sync delay will lead to a larger time window where the Finder may have an inaccurate view of the filesystem, but it will decrease the delays that you're seeing.
Support Information Services