"beachball" issues

I purchased an iMac a week ago. For the first week, I played my Facebook games without any problems. Two days ago, i started getting the beachball during game play. I thought it was perhaps due to a slow internet connection that day (we were getting rain) That wasn't the problem as my daughter tried the games from her macbook w/out any "beachballs".
I am new to Mac products and have read all information i can find. I dont feel that issues concerning memory, etc apply since the mac is only a week old and the only softward i've installed is iworks.
Wondering if anyone had experienced this and had any suggestions. This issue only applies to facebook games (farmville, etc) all other applications/websites work fine, without the delays.

Take it in for service since it's in warranty.

Similar Messages

Reinstall system to solve beachball issue, then get files from time machine backup.. will the bring beachball back

Hi,
My iMac has a beachball issue to the extent that now it not even starts up anymore, I don't even get to the desktop screen. I plan to reinstall the system from with the CD I got when I purchased the iMac 2 years ago, then update the operating system to the latest version, and then get my files and programs back from my latest time machine backup, which was completed c. 2 weeks ago.
1) Will this process generally work? I am running Mavericks 10.9, so the CD I want to install from will be an older version, but I then plan to upgrade to 10.9 before accessing the time machine files.
2) Post upgrading the op system to the latest version, when I then get the programs and files back from time machine, will that bring also back the beach ball issue, or given that everything will be saved and installed 'cleanly' it will be alright?
I am not a mac pro, so still learning, please forgive if I am not posting required info. Let me know what you need.
Thanks

1. Yes.
2. Depending on what is causing the beachball, restoring may or may not bring the problem back.
Spinning Beach Ball
Spinning Beach ball (2)
Spinning Beach ball (3)
Spinning Beach ball (4)

Mac Pro Beachball issue...

I have a Mac Pro 3.33ghz 6-core with 12GB ram. Also have 4 WD 2TB Black Caviar drives (1 in each bay slot). But I have had only one problem with this computer since the very beginning of getting it. Even when I had only bay 1 filled with the Hitachi 2TB HD that came with the Mac Pro, I would notice that maybe about 1/3rd of the time I would turn the computer on, it would power up, allow me to sign in to my account name and once I got to the desktop, it would either be sluggish to load and the beachball would appear and keep spinning (and I would have to hold the power button to restart) - OR - the desktop would fully load and be ready to go, but when I clicked on the finder and brought up the finder window which lists my drives and home folder, etc - if I clicked on any of the other HD`s in the list, it would again pop up the beachball for maybe 2 minutes and then it would show me the folders found in the finder window for the HD selected.
Apple was having me run disk utility to repair permissions, which would work for maybe first 3 start-ups but then back to same problem. I ended up adding the other HD`s and switching the HD that came with the Mac Pro to a WD Black Caviar thinking it would solve the problem, perhaps. But it still does it.
Again, it`s not every time. But I feel between 30-50% is an awful lot of time for this computer to behave so strange. And keep in mind this is just when the computer powers on, so it`s not like I am running every 5 Adobe programs simultaneously and expecting the computer to run lightning fast. It is just upon power up that it happens, when nothing else is running at all. I have even installed Applejack to clear out the caches from time to time, and again - it seems to solve the problem, but more like putting a bandaid on it - not a true fix.
I have no clue what the problem could be. I am in Japan and unfortunately their solution for everything is to send the computer back and off no replacement or temp computer while they keep it for 10 days or more. I know it is NOT the hard drives because I have had great luck with these drives in the past and present. But somewhere within my Mac Pro something is making it sluggish either during startup or upon wanting to check folders in my HD`s thru the finder window.
Any ideas? And as for maybe the hard drives - all 4 are 2tb size, and all currently have about 1.5 - 1.7 tb empty space left. So it`s not that, either. And I think the amount of ram I have is plenty for what I do - MS Office, email, iTunes and photo work (itunes and photo storage on the drives).
I am totally confused why this is. Computer is not even 6 months old.

I had the same issue with the periodic beach ball. Lots of ram and 4 7200 rpm 2TB Seagates. It drove me nuts. I tried Kappy's approach which is the correct one with limited success.
Because I am a tinkerer and wanted speed/redundancy, first I tried using software raid 0 on two of the drives. That cured most of the beachballs. So, I liked the raid 0 but was scared of the software raid and data loss.
Then I added a Caldigit Raid Card in Raid 5. The machine is like lighting now and safer. No beachballs and lighting fast. Somehow the disk combo/controller appears to have been slowing me down. I have no idea why, but that's what did it for me.
Unfortunately you cannot move this card to 2009 or later MP's unless you use external raid. It will only do internal on 2008's. This is a very expensive solution but it worked for me. Since I can't even contemplate replacing this machine since it is so quick, the raid setup cost is partially offset by the number of more years I can keep my mac pro.
If you have the nerve to try raid 0 and keep good backups, that may work for you too.

CS6/Mac - Linked Text Boxes Spinning Beachball Issue

Issue:
When I have two Text Boxes Linked together and Im typing on the second box my curser flashes/ blinks from curser to the spinning beachball of death back and forth as im typing..
Anyone know how to stop this from happening.. Its very annoying and distracting while Im trying to type.
Steps to Recreate:
1. Create a new document in InDesign
2. Create two text boxes/ frames of any size, smaller (2" x 2") is better so you dont have to type a lot of text
3. Link the two text boxes/ frames
4. Start typing random filler text in the first text box until it starts overflowing into the second one..
5. Note that the curser does or doesnt start to flash/ blink from curser to beachball over and over as you type.

Magpie Mike wrote:
Why does Apple make it so difficult and non-intuitive?
Apple assumes that users are adult able to read the User Guide delivered with the application (from the Help menu).
We have the choice between two different formats.
Choose the one fitting our needs is no more complicated than choose a ballot-paper.
Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE mercredi 24 juin 2009 11:35:47)

Beachball issues, have EtreCheck; anyone offer diagnosis?

Hi. My four year old MacBook Pro is running on 10.6 and getting increasingly slow as the weeks go by. It rarely hangs completely but is just downright slow on some basic tasks (using Excel or Word for example).
Have downloaded an Etrecheck report below. Can anyone offer an interptetation that points towards what I need to fix to get running at 100mph again?
Thanks guys.
Hardware Information:
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009)
MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro5,3
1 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU: 2 cores
4 GB RAM
Video Information:
NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT - VRAM: 512 MB
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M - VRAM: 256 MB
System Software:
Mac OS X 10.6.8 (10K549) - Uptime: 3 days 0:50:26
Disk Information:
Hitachi HTS545050B9SA02 disk0 : (465.76 GB)
(null) (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 200 MB
Macintosh HD (disk0s2) /: 465.44 GB (114.35 GB free)
MATSHITADVD-R UJ-868
USB Information:
Apple Inc. Built-in iSight
Apple Internal Memory Card Reader
Logitech USB Receiver
Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad
Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver
Apple Inc. BRCM2046 Hub
Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
FireWire Information:
Thunderbolt Information:
Kernel Extensions:
com.Logitech.Control Center.HID Driver (2.6.0)
Problem System Launch Daemons:
[not loaded] org.samba.winbindd.plist
Problem System Launch Agents:
[failed] com.apple.Kerberos.renew.plist
Launch Daemons:
[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist
[loaded] com.bombich.ccc.plist
[loaded] com.google.keystone.daemon.plist
[loaded] com.sonos.smbbump.plist
Launch Agents:
[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist
User Launch Agents:
[loaded] com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist
[failed] [email protected]
User Login Items:
iTunesHelper
EEventManager
AdobeResourceSynchronizer
Dropbox
Logitech Control Center Daemon
EEventManager
ConnectService
3rd Party Preference Panes:
Flash Player
Flip4Mac WMV
Growl
Logitech Control Center
Perian
Internet Plug-ins::
o1dbrowserplugin: Version: 4.9.1.16010
OfficeLiveBrowserPlugin: Version: 12.3.6
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin: Version: 2.4.2.4
AdobePDFViewerNPAPI: Version: 10.1.8
FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 11.9.900.152 - SDK 10.6
AmazonMP3DownloaderPlugin101749: Version: AmazonMP3DownloaderPlugin 1.0.17 - SDK 10.4
PDF Browser Plugin: Version: 2.4.4 - SDK 10.6
Flash Player: Version: 11.9.900.152 - SDK 10.6
iPhotoPhotocast: Version: 7.0
googletalkbrowserplugin: Version: 4.9.1.16010
npgtpo3dautoplugin: Version: 0.1.44.29 - SDK 10.5
AdobePDFViewer: Version: 10.1.8
QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.6.6
Silverlight: Version: 5.0.61118.0 - SDK 10.6
JavaAppletPlugin: Version: 13.9.8 - SDK 10.6 Outdated! Update
Bad Fonts:
None
Old applications:
None
Time Machine:
Information not available
Top Processes by CPU:
    13% firefox
    11% plugin-container
    2% EtreCheck
    1% ConnectService
    1% activitymonitord
Top Processes by Memory:
754 MB firefox
250 MB Mail
102 MB Dropbox
90 MB WindowServer
82 MB plugin-container
Virtual Memory Statistics:
18 MB Free RAM
2.22 GB Active RAM
1.11 GB Inactive RAM
412 MB Wired RAM
1.46 GB Page-ins
515 MB Page-outs

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.1)
Use Software Update or the OS 10.6.8 combo update to update your OS. Also, update everything SU has to offer for your computer. When done, repair permissions and restart your computer.
=============
Check out the following & do the necessary:
User Tip: Why is my computer slow?
What to do when your computer is too slow
Speeding up your Mac
================
Check out: Troubleshoot the spinning beach ball/freezing & crashing and Troubleshoot the spinning beach ball

Spinning Beachball FIXED in iTunes 7.7.1

Congratulations Apple, iPod Touch spinning beachball issue when connecting to iTunes 7.7.1 has now been fixed, no more waiting 2-3mins for iTunes to recognise the Touch.

I had a problem with my iPod Video 60GB being updated when I updated to iTunes 7 and it got worse (had to wait a very long time for it to update my iPod if it ever did) when I updated to iTunes 7.0.1.8. Then I was advised that iTunes shouldn't have installed with the 'old iPod updaters' still installed, but it did. So I uninstalled the 'old iPod updaters' via 'Add and Remove Programs' in control panel. When I rebooted iTunes said the iPod software was missing and instructed me to re-install iTunes. After the re-install everything runs great. Presently, I only have iTunes 7.0.1.8, Apple Software Update on my computer and version 1.2 on my iPod.

Keyboard can't type soe letters and relaces the with strange series of other letters. beachball constantly. beqrtwt 16 gb rabcvxz . idk what to do. lease help0.

Problem description:
keyboard can’t type soe letters and relaces the with strange series of other letters. beachball all the tie. 16 gb rabcvxz . idk what to do. lease help0.
EtreCheck version: 2.0.6 (91)
Report generated October 25, 2014 at 3:36:04 PM EDT
Hardware Information: ℹ️
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012) (Verified)
MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro9,2
1 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 2-core
16 GB RAM Upgradeable
BANK 0/DIMM0
8 GB DDR3 1333 MHz ok
BANK 1/DIMM0
8 GB DDR3 1333 MHz ok
Bluetooth: Good - Handoff/Airdrop2 supported
Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n
Video Information: ℹ️
Intel HD Graphics 4000 -
Color LCD 1280 x 800
System Software: ℹ️
OS X 10.10 (14A389) - Uptime: 0:37:54
Disk Information: ℹ️
APPLE HDD TOSHIBA MK5065GSXF disk0 : (500.11 GB)
S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified
EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted> : 210 MB
Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted> [Recovery]: 650 MB
MACINTOSH HD (disk1) / [Startup]: 498.88 GB (475.08 GB free)
Core Storage: disk0s2 499.25 GB Online
MATSHITADVD-R   UJ-8A8
USB Information: ℹ️
Apple Inc. BRCM20702 Hub
Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver
Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad
Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)
Thunderbolt Information: ℹ️
Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus
Gatekeeper: ℹ️
Mac App Store and identified developers
Kernel Extensions: ℹ️
/System/Library/Extensions
[not loaded] com.livescribe.kext.LivescribeSmartpen (1) Support
Launch Daemons: ℹ️
[running] com.livescribe.PenCommService.plist Support
[loaded] com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist Support
User Launch Agents: ℹ️
[loaded] com.littleknownsoftware.MailPluginTool-Startup.plist Support
[loaded] com.littleknownsoftware.MailPluginTool-Watcher.plist Support
User Login Items: ℹ️
LivescribeHelper Application (/Applications/Livescribe Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/LivescribeHelperAutoLaunch.app)
Internet Plug-ins: ℹ️
Default Browser: Version: 600 - SDK 10.10
QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3
SharePointBrowserPlugin: Version: 14.4.5 - SDK 10.6 Support
3rd Party Preference Panes: ℹ️
None
Time Machine: ℹ️
Time Machine not configured!
Top Processes by CPU: ℹ️
      13% Safari
      8% parentalcontrolsd
      5% WindowServer
      1% com.apple.Safari.SearchHelper
      1% launchd
Top Processes by Memory: ℹ️
155 MB Safari
103 MB mds_stores
103 MB Contacts
93 MB com.apple.WebKit.WebContent
86 MB Spotlight
Virtual Memory Information: ℹ️
10.43 GB Free RAM
4.80 GB Active RAM
696 MB Inactive RAM
1.24 GB Wired RAM
1.02 GB Page-ins
0 B Page-outs

Thanks, I'm typing this message from an external keyboard borrowed from one of my schools iMac. It is working fine so could this be a serious hardware issue? I upgraded the RAM from 4 gb to 16 gb thinking that would solve the slowness/beachball issue but it didn't. Could it possibly be a faulty SATA cable or time to upgrade my hard drive as well?
I'm feeling like this is beyond my reach and do not want to damage my MBP further. I'll shut it down and take it to the tech store on campus and hope they have mercy on my wallet. Thanks for the help.

Beachball on boot with MacBook Air + kernel_task using 138% of CPU

My wife's MacBook Air has recently become unusable - when you boot, it seemingly operates fine until the Finder launches, at which point the beachball appears and persists indefinitely. No applications can be launched, files accessed, etc - the only think you can do is hard shutdown.
Booted in Safe Mode and set Activity Monitor to launch on startup, then restarted in normal - kernel_task is using 138% of the CPU consistently, beachball issue present.
Shut down and booted again in Safe Mode and the issue is not present, with kernel_task using an appropriate amount of memory. This is the wife's computer, I'm a PC guy, so I only know little bits of Mac stuff - repaired permissions, etc - to no results. Any ideas on how to move forward in resolving this?
Thanks in advance.

First, you might delete the /Home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist file while in safe mode.
Then try this:
Delete caches to resolve some startup problems:
Boot into single-user mode. After startup is completed you will be in command line mode and should see a prompt with a cursor positioned after it. At the prompt enter the following then press RETURN after each commandline:
/sbin/fsck -fy
If you receive a message that says "*** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED ***" then re-run the command until you receive a message that says "** The volume (nameofvolume) appears to be OK." If you re-run the command more than seven times and do not get the OK message, then the drive cannot be repaired this way.
If you were successful then enter:
/sbin/mount -uw /
rm -rf /System/Library/Caches/*
rm -rf /Library/Caches/*
reboot
I suggest you print out the above in a large mono-spaced font to be sure you do not make any errors when entering the commands. When in single-uwer mode you have 'root' access, so it's important that you not make any mistakes. Note that there are spaces between a command and what follows, so be sure you type each line above properly.

Fixed my SL freezes, hanging, beachball

After migrating from Leopard to Snow Leopard (10.6.2) about a month ago, I experienced a constant issue with hanging applications, sporadic freezes with a variety of applications.
I have gone through all the suggestions posted wrt to this issue and for me the following fix worked (so far...) rather perfect. My systems now runs as stable as it did using Leopard. Reinstalling, PRAMMING, VRAMMING, CleanUps, DiskUtility check, S.M.A.R.T. status checks & eventually just using TimeMachine restore did not solve my freeze/hanging/beachball issue
_My solution_: go to ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/
and put all the plugins you see there into a custom folder (I named mine SwitchedOff). Now move all the plugins to that folder and reboot. Well: now your browsers are decapitated, so I moved
Flash Player.plugin
flashplayer.xpt &
Silverlight.plugin
back into ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/
and restarted the browsers. (now enabling flash & silverlight video options)
Result: no more sporadic freezes, hangs, 30-60 secs. beachball phenomena and basically a stable steady OS I was used too.
FYI: I have not tested moving back the other Plugins into my ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/SwitchedOff folder. They now contain:
DivXBrowserPlugin.plugin
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.webplugin
Googletalkbrowser.plugin
iPhotoPhotocast.plugin
JavaPluginCocoa.bundle (an alias)
NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave
npdivx.xpt
nsIQTScriptablePlugin.xpt
Quartz Composer.webplugin
QuickTime Plugin.plugin
XStandard.plugin
I will do some testing if re-adding these plugins recreate the freezes etc. but for now this solution works for me and will enjoy a freeze-less OS for now.

You're correct. BTW, these are installed on my SL machines and have never caused any issues for a year and a half (beta-tested SL):
DirectorShockwave.plugin
DivXBrowserPlugin.plugin
DRM Plugin.bundle
Flash Player.plugin
flashplayer.xpt
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.webplugin
Google Earth Web Plug-in.plugin
Installer Log File
iPhotoPhotocast.plugin
ipxBrowserPlugin
JavaPlugin2_NPAPI.plugin
JavaPluginCocoa.bundle
npdivx.xpt
nsIQTScriptablePlugin.xpt
Quartz Composer.webplugin
QuickTime Plugin.plugin
RealPlayer Plugin.plugin
SpeedDownload Browser Plugin.plugin

How do I fix the spinning beachball if CPU activity is low?

Hi,
My son's Macbook Pro (2009), OS 10.7.4, intermittently comes to a crawl. This can happen in Safari, waking up from sleep, or in other circumstances. There doesn't seem to be a clear pattern.
When the slowdown happens, Activity Monitor shows no spike in CPU usage. Only 1.4 GB of 2 GB RAM is in use, and there is about 27 GB of free disk space of (160). This only happens in the main user account. There is no slowdown in the guest account.
I ran Disk Utility from the recorvery drive and repaired permissions and the disk. I also ran Onyx and did all the maintenance steps.
I'd be grateful for any hints that might fix this.
Michel Chaouli

Michel Chaouli wrote:
I also ran Onyx and did all the maintenance steps.
Did you also do all the cleaning steps?
OnyX clears the dyld cache
Run through the Steps here
..Step by Step to fix your Mac
Also this
Why is my computer slow?
Eliminate a Wifi issue by connecting a Ethernet cable directly to your router or modem (power off/on)
If your still having beachball issues, what I suspect has occured (which a lot of people mistakenly do) is the hard drive got sectors damaged when the computer was moved/bumped while it was in operation.
The fix for this (and anything else) is rather drastic, all user data off the Macintosh HD will have to be removed, the entire partition Disk Utility > Erase with Secure Zero (or middle selection option), OS X reinstalled and updated, programs reinstalled and files returned.
If one has a previous uneffected bootable clone or TimeMachine backup that can be used to restore.
Most commonly used backup methods
Reducing bad sectors effect on hard drives

ITunes 7.7 + Pod beachball: a possible fix

I had the spinning beachball issue when connecting my iPod to iTunes 7.7, as reported by many others at this site. As reported here, the hang eventually clears, but it happened every time the iPod was connected and took a very long time.
Here is what I did to solve the problem, which has not recurred for me since I followed this procedure. As far as I can tell, it has something to do with a corruption of the database files.
I simply deleted and recreated the iTunes Library database files, namely:
~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library
and
~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library.xml
Caution: do not delete the music files themselves: just the database ones.
I then rebooted the Mac and launched iTunes (without the iPod connected) to recreate a new, empty, Library. I then added my music back to iTunes, by importing everything in ~/iTunes/iTunes Music/
I then connected my iPod, which was recognized instantly, and has continued to be recognized normally since then.
I hope this helps some of you.
-- Nike Vatsal

Hmmm here is what I did to fix my spinning beachball, see what you think! A bit drastic though, wish I'd read this thread before hand and I would have tried this instead.
Okay. I got my iphone 3G yesterday, popped in the SIM and plugged it in to my MBP and up it pops in iTunes 7.7 no problems at all, registered it okay and synced it okay, put on some music and a video okay, played around with some settings re-synced it okay. Disconnected it once or twice and reconnected it and synced it okay. Anyway you get the picture, all was well, until I did two things with the iphone disconnected from the laptop. 1st I downloaded an app from the app store with the phone, the one that turns your iPhone into a light saber, yeah I know - but I got several minutes or amusement from it. 2nd, I created 4 ringtones using garageband and some music that I had got from CD then using garagebands share option I sent these 20sec clips to iTunes and they appeared in the ringtone folder.
So all okay so far, until I connect my phone again and iTunes won't respond with the iPhone connected and I get the spinning beachball of death, I didn't wait more then a few minutes before pulling it though, as under the force quit area it said iTunes was not responding. I deleted the iPhone app and the ringtones, it then says that the iPhone is not readable or writeable. At this stage I plug the iPhone into another mac and it pops up straight away in iTunes.
I download iTunes 7.7 again onto the MBP and re-install it, nothing changes. I then back up my music and trash iTunes completely off the MBP and re-install iTunes and BINGO it sees the iPhone no problem, I then spent another hour uploading my music back into iTunes again.
All is working okay now, but I'm at a loss as to explain what caused this in the first place, can anyone shed an light on this one for me.
Many thanks.

Slow system and application startup times

Hi,
I've got a 17" Macook Pro (Early 2011) 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7 - ever since I bought it I feel like it runs a little slow.
I've been a long-time mac used but I feel a little disappointed with this machine.
e.g.: Startup time takes around 4 minutes.
Applications take around 10 seconds to start.
Chrome sometimes takes 5-10 seconds to start, about the same to quit.
My Xbench scores fluctuate wildly - best I've ever got is 220, worst is 18. 160 is about the average.
http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc2=526647
http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc2=537725
http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc2=544252
I feel that tried everything including:
- Creating a new user
- Repairing disk permissions
- DIsk verify and repair
- Removing all startup items
- Installing extra ram (currently at 8GB)
It runs well most of the time but frustratingly slow sometimes and there doesn't seem to be any anomalous activity in activity monitor. I feel that it could be the hard disk, but don't know (I always have 250-350gb free).
Any help appreciated!

Thanks for the link. I've never seen that page before but I have done everything in that list.
It's not a spinning beachball issue - the system doesn't lock-up often it just takes a **** long time to do some things. I didn't really realise it as a problem until I started using other people's older/lower spec'ed macs and noticed that they run FASTER than mine.
Activity monitor pics - just after a restart with my usual apps running:
CPU https://skitch.com/e-hellodaniel/83pq5/activity-monitor
Memory https://skitch.com/e-hellodaniel/83pq7/activity-monitor
Disk https://skitch.com/e-hellodaniel/83pxg/activity-monitor
Even using Skitch to take those screenshots took ages.
It's almost like the disk or CPU is throttled back or bottlenecked, and always has been...

Mac Mini slow when accessing hd - NVidia MCP79 SATA Driver Problem?

I bought a Mac Mini (Early 2009) a while ago. Unfortunately i have a problem concerning speed and responseability which i couldnt solve even with a lot of googleing.
I noticed that problem first time when i tried to play a video file from hd. The video does not play as smooth as it should. It stutters from time to time. It is like a short interruption. The picture freezes for half a second and replays the lost frames very fast after that. These freezes do not occure periodically. It seems to appear randomly. The wierd thing is that the cpu usage is very low and there is enough free ram and disk space.
So i think its not a ressource problem. I noticed that these freezes do not only affect video playback. The whole system is kind of unresponsive. And thats the the case if there is some sort of hd or dvd access. When i try to copy a huge file these freezes are increasing rapidly. The more hd access the more the system is unresponsive and cannot be used anymore.
All these effects reminded me of a faulty dma/udma setting on windows machines. So i tried to check the transfer mode for my macs hd controler. But i didnt find any place where to check that. And i dont really think it is running in pio mode because that would result in a high cpu usage.
I played around a little bit to understand whats going on. So this is what i found out:
When i play a video from the hd its stuttering. It increases if i copy a file from or to the hd. Copying a file from the dvd-rom increases the effect as well. It is not influenced by a copy from AND to an external usb hd. And the whole effects do not appear under Windows Vista no matter how much i acces the hd.
So i come to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with the SATA controler driver which is a NVidia MCP79. Unfortunately i have no idea what i can do to solve this problem. And i didnt find any advice or something in the internet.
So i would appreciate any suggestions.

Ok, I think I was jumping to conclusion. Disabling journaling didnt remove the problem. It just seemed so because my problem is much less distinct with Leopard. Bad luck I guess.
kmac1036, to answer your questions. For sure I dont have warranty anymore. Maybee I should have posted that I upgraded my Mac to 3 GB RAM. Furthermore I replaced the original Hitachi HD with a Western Digital 500 GB model.
Somehow that may be connected to my problem. I've read that many people have problems with the WD HD and those beachballing issues with SN. (I do so too)
But my performance problem when accessing the HD did also exist with the Hitachi. In fact the Mini was extremly slow with the original 1 GB RAM. I think putting some additional memory into the machine helped because it reduced hd accesses.
Ok, I am not an expert. But if I had to guess I would say the following seems to happen. There may be an operation in the hd driver that takes longer than it should. Because of that it maintains cpu cycles and prevents the kernel to continue scheduling. That would explain why the freezes are not connected to a high cpu usage and why the systems seems to catch up things after the freeze very fast.

Installing a SSD on MacBook Pro

Hi
I'm planning on installing a SSD on my MacBook Pro, purchased August 2011. Can anyone point me to the correct kind of disk I should buy? I have found various on Crucial's website, however they all seem slightly different - I recall Crucial being a decent make to buy from but can anyone back that up?
Thankyou.

I've found the Crucial M4 SSD to be a great option for my primary boot disk in my mac-mini server. However; you MUST make sure that it's running the v0309 firmware. Here's my experience:
I had a 'spinning beachball' issue with my Crucial M4 2.5" 256GB SSD, and found the following fix. NOTE: Do NOT update Firmware to the most recent version released 04/2012 (000F). Make sure to have your SSD backed up prior to update, unless of course you're trying to re-load.
========
The SSD firmware version is stored on the SSD itself so the upgrade does not need to be carried out on the system the SSD will be used in. The easiest way to upgrade the firmware is by connecting the SSD to a system that has a CD drive.
If this is not possible, you can follow these steps to create a bootable USB flash drive and upgrade the firmware from that.
1. Connect an empty USB flash drive
2. Download rEFIt-syslinux from the link below. This will allow your USB drive to be recognized as a startup volume by the Mac.
http://blog.io101.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/rEFIt-Syslinux.dmg_.zip
3. Mount the dmg. This will mount two volumes called 'rEFIt' and 'SYSLINUX'
4. Open a Terminal and take a note of which volume is which with the command <diskutil list>
e.g. /dev/disk1 for the USB drive and /dev/disk2 for the dmg
5. Unmount (NOT eject) both volumes, after you have confirmed the two new volumes (e.g. disk1 & disk2):
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
You should get a message saying you were successful
6. Copy the dmg onto the USB drive:
dd if=/dev/disk2 of=/dev/disk1 bs=1m
You should get a message detailing the number of records in and out and number of bytes transferred
7. Eject both:
diskutil eject /dev/disk1
diskutil eject /dev/disk2
8. Unplug and plug back in the USB drive and mount the SYSLINUX volume
9. Download the firmware version 0309 for the M4 SSD here:
http://edge.crucial.com/firmware/m4/0309/Crucialm4_0309.zip
10. Unzip and mount the firmware ISO and go into the folder BOOT, then ISOLINUX
11. Copy the contents into the SYSLINUX volume
12. Delete the existing file syslinux.cfg and rename ISOLINUX.CFG to syslinux.cfg
13. Reboot your mac and hold the option key to select a boot volume and select the eEFIt volume, then choose the "Boot legacy OS SYSLINUX' option
14. Follow the instructions to update the firmware.

How do I know if my apps will work under Yosemite?

Hey guys, I'm running Yosemite right now on a mid-2011 Mac Mini that was originally running Lion. I then installed Mavericks on top of Lion(I didn't try Mountain Lion) and then I installed Yosemite on top of Mavericks. I'm planning on erasing the 500GB HDD and installing a fresh copy of Yosemite and then restore my apps and system preferences via an external Time Machine USB HDD I've been using for 2 years.
I'm having a spinning beachball issue that renders my Mac Mini unusable for a few minutes at a time and this is why I want to do a clean install of OSX.
So far my apps have been running great under Yosemite, BUT I'm worried that my apps are running great ONLY because I was running Lion and Mavericks before so the apps I'm running now are only working because the apps were installed onto the Lion and Mavericks 'layers'??? I haven't needed to re-install any apps since installing Yosemite.
How can I check that my apps will run under Yosemite?
Please help!

NewbMacUser wrote:
From what he said here: "Because, after you run the Upgrade, it is running Yosemite and not Lion or Mavericks."
How does that translate into this
So whatever apps I'm running at the moment on Yosemite will definitely work when I wipe the Mac's HDD?
You need to slow down and read what is being written

"beachball" issues

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