Bluetooth causing finder hanging and beach balls

This problem suddenly arose a few days ago when I was running 10.8.5. I thought updating to 10.9 would fix it, but no ~ the problem is still here ...
Up until a few days my bluetooth Apple keyboard and trackpad were behaving perfectly. Then out of the blue I started getting 20 second hangs, with beachball, every time I did something invovling the Finder ~ opening folders, clicking on files in a folder, etc. I ran all the utilities and maintenance jobs I could think, but the problem persisted.
By trial and error I discovered that turning Bluetooth off fixed the problem. I then tried different keyboards and trackpads (seeing if it was a hardware problem), but no joy ~ the Finder still hung.
I updated to Mavericks, but the problem persists
I tried everything I can think of, including reseting SMC and PRAM, but no joy.
Can anyone help me find the cause, and a fix, for this problem?
Thank you ....

Hi,
No way to know for sure if these are symptoms of an impending hard drive failure but make sure you have all important data backed up just in case.
Go here for help with kernel panics...
Apple Support - About kernel panic messages
Mac OS X Kernel Panic FAQ
The X Lab - Resolving Kernel Panics
Tutorial: Avoiding and eliminating Kernel panics
Carolyn

Similar Messages

Mini and constant hangs and beach balls of death

OSX 10.5.8 2GHz 4GB, Safari 5.0
I'm starting to get quite frustrated with my Mini. I'm a power user and it's not uncommon for me to have 25 Safari windows going in tabs in the dock, and running LIghtroom, Photoshop, NeoOffice, Mail, Yahoo messenger, Gmail, Virus Barrier, 1Password, Little Snitch, Text Edit, Preview among other things all at once. I have nearly 300 applications on this machine.
Today I think I was running Chronosync and tried to take a screen shot of something (I use RapidoStart to get apps quick) - so I hit the key to show the apps, and click away on the screenshot widget to get the capture cursor and nothing - so I'm trying it over again several times and no reaction. I give up and a minute or two later I get the capture cursor over and over again 10x forcing me to use it to make it stop, and getting 10x useless captures.
That's just one incident. I'm constantly getting beach balls in Safari. Yes there might be some flash content - though I do also use ClickToFlash to stop most of it. I use Main Menu (handy drop down folder in the Menu Bar for all my apps) - sometimes I click on it and it doesn't react - or hangs and finally works after a looong lag or beach ball.
Sometimes when it's really bad I launch Activity Monitor - if I can get it to react. Safari not responding is the most common culprit, but more often there is no CPU hog or frozen apps on the list. It's just slow and sticky all the way. I do repair disk permissions regularly as well as backups with Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper - both.
The reason I got the Mini was to get rid of these problems - same things that happened even worse on my White iMac. Now it's the same stuff all over again. Pre-OSX Macs NEVER hung when I clicked on something - now it's constantly click and grind. I want immediate and fast use and navigation - is that so much to ask?
Thinking about going to a faster CPU iMac model - or any other suggestions would be helpful. Roto-rooter for clogged OSX? Thanks!

Thanks everyone for the input!
I've been through all the standard stuff (troubleshoot the beach ball) many times.
I was thinking that it's just the Mini coming up short on processing power - but I would agree it's part that - but also quite a bit in the way I work. I never shut down the machine - also a good idea to clear out the cobwebs and reboot or shutdown more...
Shovebox is something I have but never tried - running it now to see if that helps - but part of the reason to keep many windows/tabs going is to maintain active logins on sites - and to have fast retrieval, instant participation, and reminders of current items - shopping, research, discussions, blog, webdesign, web galleries etc.
Safari does seem central to some of the problems. I'm always trashing cookies and dumping the cache (something else that causes a mega-beachball). Firefox might be an alternative - but it's not currently working with my wireless Kensington keyboard button and scroll shortcuts for web surfing (possibly could be reprogrammed though?). It also seems a bit slower and is not as well color managed/correct as Safari.
I got Virus Barrier as part of a MacHeist deal - it's subscription has run out though so not something I'm interested in continuing with. Probably worth uninstalling to see if that helps. I never did really run into any Viruses anyway! It's mostly ParanoiaWare, LOL.
I'm slowly transitioning away from the PPC apps.
Interesting comment about not using Widgets - guess they just put them in there to degrade OSX performance so it's more like a PC! LOL
I'm guessing a new iMac might be a big bump in speed as well.
I resisted them and chose a Mini because of the horrible glossy screen. I'm a professional photographer so it is critical to have the most accurate non-fatiguing monitor possible - not the "newest and shiniest" just that looks good in a retail store.
So if the Mini isn't enough computing power and the iMac glossy display *****, there's no where left to go in the mid-range. Probably go iMac and use an external "good" monitor for critical editing work - and the glossy useless one for the web and everything else. A Mac Mid-Tower would be the answer - but nope.
OK thanks again - that's a good start to hopefully improving performance!

Constant freezing and beach balls

I've skimmed other posts and seen that it usualy is a hard drive issue. My question, though, is that most of those posts seem to relate to people having chnaged the computer's original hard drive to something different. My computer's out of the box; haven't changed anything. It's been doing constant 5-45 second freezes and beach balls but when I brought it in to the genuis bar, they took it in - then gave it back to me exactly the same, because it passed every single test. Anyone have any ideas on what I should do? I bought it in November 2010 (Macbook Pro, 13"), and it's running worse than my housemate's older computer yet supposedly nothing is 'wrong' with it.

Hi a,
It may be a lack of RAM. How much do you have?
One way to get an idea whether more RAM will help or not, is to check Page outs and Swap used. First, use your Mac as you normally would, the longer the better (checking this right after starting up isn’t likely to show you anything). After you’ve used your Mac for awhile (again, the longer the better), go to Applications > Utilities > open Activity Monitor > in the top menu at right, select All Processes in the drop down menu > near the bottom of the window click on System Memory. If Page outs is more that about 10% of Page ins, and/or Swap used is large, chances are good that adding RAM will help.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342
(PageOuts explained and “thrashing”) http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/lackofram.html
http://querieslinux.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-is-difference-between-swapping-and .html
Sometimes a process can run amok and use more of the CPU than it should, potentially causing a slowdown and/or heat issues and/or other issues. To check on this, first use your Mac as you normally would, the longer the better (checking thisright after starting up may not show you anything). After you’ve used your Mac for awhile (again, the longer the better), go to Applications > Utilities> open Activity Monitor > in the top menu at right, select All Processes in the drop down menu > click on the column heading titled % CPU (this will update continuously, showing the percentage each process is using) > toward the bottom left of the window, click on CPU (this will show % Idle, which will also tell you how much of the CPU is being used).
It may also be due to a corrupt file or OS and reinstalling the OS could fix it.
It may also be due to certain applications which need updating.

Imac will not boot up, chimes with apple logo and beach ball spin??

imac will not boot up, chimes with apple logo and beach ball spin?? after installing adobe flash and up graded apple softeware

If your iMac came with or is running Lion, startup holding either the Command-R keys or the Option key and select the recovery partition and then use Disk Utility to repair the Macintosh HD.
see > OS X Lion: About Lion Recovery
If your running Snow Leopard or earlier OS X, pop in your Install DVD and startup holding either the Option or C key, then open and use Disk Utility to repair the Macintosh HD.
see > Mac OS X - Using Disk Utility to Repair a Disk

ITunes 8 - Loads Slow and Beach Balls

Ever since I started using iTunes 8 it loads real slow and beach balls as I go through my cover art. Anyone else have this issue?? I never had this problem with any other iTunes versions before.
Sidenote: The Genius is turn off.
Thanks.

Hi J|Spoon,
Try deleting the iTunes preference file. Quit iTunes. Locate this file: com.apple.iTunes.plist
It's here: /Users/YourName/Library/Preferences. Open the Preferences folder, locate that file and drag it to your Desktop. Relaunch iTunes and see if you can access your cover art without iTunes freezing up. If that is the case, then drag that .plist file to the Trash, empty the Trash and reboot. Preference files can become corrupted over time. Your Mac will create a new pref file for you.
Carolyn

IPhoto causing 20-30 second hangs - spinning beach ball and music stops

Very often when I browse through my pictures, suddenly iPhoto will freeze, the beach ball appears and if I attempt to use other programs the entire system freezes. If I'm playing music in iTunes, it will pause and then restart after 20-30 secs when iPhoto and the rest of the system suddenly works again as if nothing happened.
Anyone else notices this? It happens as I said quite often, and I can provoke it by flipping through pictures very fast (for instance by holding down the left or right arrow on the keyboard).
I noticed that this message often appears in the console when I initiate iPhoto:
06/10/09 14.17.11 iPhoto[1023] ILLogger ILMediaBrowserPathWatcher: ** Error in ILMediaBrowserPathWatcher startFSEventStream failed to start for paths: (
"/Users/mikkeldrewsen/Library/Preferences"
I don't know if that's relevant, but there it is none the less.
I hope someone can help me!

Option 1
Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Choose to Rebuild iPhoto Library Database from automatic backup.
If that fails:
Option 2
Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords, faces and places back.
Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.
Regards
TD

Help please! - Hard disk Volume Header problems and 'Beach Ball' hangs

Hi all
I was wondering if anyone can help me out with my hard drive problems. Until recently, everything was going fine with my Powerbook after upgrading to 10.4.2. Then all of a sudden, one day, at the login screen I got a beach ball hang which lasted around 4 minutes. When the dock is launched, I get another beach ball hang for an additional 3 or 4 minutes.
When it finally finishes logging in everything is fine, I can access all my files and do whatever I want to do at full speed, that is, until an app asks me for my administrators password which welcomes back the beach ball and a system hang for another 3-4 minutes or so.
Disk Utility says that I have minor Volume header problems but will not fix it as it abruptly quits before it finishes diagnosing the drive.
I have Disk Warrior 3.0.3 and have tried to use it but when I boot off the CD it does not recognise my hard drive for fixing puroposes but still displays the hard drive in the Hardware tab.
The SMART status of the drive is verified and there doesnt seem to be any problems in that respect.
I have repaired permissions, ran all the processes in Onyx and still no joy.
Finally, I have tried to use TechTool Pro but on a surface disk check it fails halfway through after shifting a few bad sectors around.
Everything seems to be fine if you ignore all these beach ball hangs but I'm worried about a very imminent hard drive fail. I am now in the process of zeroing all the empty spaces on my hard disk to see if the badsector problems can be fixed in this way.
When the beach ball appears I can hear the hard disk making a scraping sound if this helps at all.
Please help me! Its driving me nuts! I am also currently working abroad hence I don't have my Mac OS X Tiger install disks on me otherwise I'd just do an archive and reinstall.
Is this a physical problem? Volume header problem? I'm so confused!
Any help greatly appreciated! Many thanks...

It sounds as if you've attempted the appropriate fixes for your drive... Disk Utility, Disk Warrior, TechTool Pro and Onyx. If none of these utilities have repaired the problem then perhaps there is a hardware failure of some sort... perhaps a head crash has done some physical damage.
How old is this hard drive? Is it the original?
It's unfortunate that you don't have your Tiger install discs as a reinstall of the OS might relieve the problem. But I doubt it since, as you say, "the disc makes a scraping sound". That suggests to me the problem may be physical damage or wear of the hard drive.
If I were in your shoes, I would backup any critical files now, before the drive fails completely.
I'd replace the drive, and probably buy an external enclosure (USB or Firewire) for the old drive to allow for data retrieval until it failed.
Unfortunately, replacing the drive will require your software install discs... =( ... can't help you there.
TiBook G4 1G, PMac G4 dual 1G, MacPlus Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Sudden performance issues, crashing and beach ball

The last week or so Safari slowed down dramatically, and kept giving me the spinning beach ball. Now this is happening throughout my system, after a restart it seems to work ok for a few minutes, then will barely funciton at all in any application, usually resulting in a spinning beach ball that never stops, or the sytem freezes completely.
I'm running 10.8.4, have the RAM maxed out, plenty of free HD space. I'm done some basic troubleshotting inlcuding verifying the disc, and also ran DiscWarrior from an external DVD.
Still having the same issues.
I work at home and this is my main computer so I'm trying to get it fixed soon.
thanks in advance!
Jeff

Back up all data immediately as your boot drive may be failing.
If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator. I've tested them only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, they may not work as described.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
syslog -k Sender kernel -k Message CReq 'Channel t|GPU D|I/O|n Cause: -' | tail | open -ef
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V).
The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. Normally the command will produce no output, and the window will be empty. If the TextEdit window (not the Terminal window) has anything in it, post it — the text, please, not a screenshot. The title of the TextEdit window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that.

Constant hang/freeze/beach ball

I am experiencing nearly constant freezing/beach balls. I can barely type this as it hangs up every 30 seconds or so. It happens in all applications and the finder. The issue started a few months back (with an update I suspect), and I have since installed SL with negative results.
I have repaired permissions and the disk from the SL install disk and checked the hardware with the original system disks: all with no problems reported. Activity Monitor shows 27 GB free space on the HD, more than half the memory available and minimal CPU activity.
Not sure where to head from here, aside from installing SL from a clean disk...

I think that means that someone out there may be attempting to get into your computer and the firewall built into Snow Leopard is preventing that from happening. But I am not sure. Do you have a router attached between your Mac and your cable modem? You could try disabling the Firewall temporarily in System Preferences > Security > Firewall (click Stop) to see if that resolves your problem. If you don't have a router this could be a problem since without the Firewall you would leave the computer open to someone from the outside getting in.

Hard drive access and beach ball

Whenever I open Safari, I hear my hard drive being accessed constantly and get the beach ball. This slows down my computer and makes Safari almost useless. I wasn't sure what the casue of the beach ball was, so I posted something in the OSX forum (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1878540&tstart=0), but have since debugged it (and started using Firefox) and realized the porblem only happened when I used Safari.
This is a recent issue and I don't recall installing anything recently to cause a change. I have 2GB of RAM and 167GB available on my HD, so it shouldn't be a memory issue. I just cleared the cache and history, but it didn't seem to help.
Can anyone help me - I'd prefer to use an Apple product (Safari), but don't understand why it is failing me.
Thanks.

Hi,
It might be an idea to verify the hard drive with Disk Utility just to make sure the disk thrashing isn't a sign of some damage on the drive.
If the disk gets the all clear, try using Onyx and the settings shown on this page to see if it helps:
http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/onyx_leopard.html

ITunes 11 hangs (spinning beach ball) in Mountain Lion

Whenever I open iTunes, it hangs with a spinning beach ball for about three minutes. During this time, Activity Monitor shows iTunes (not responding) using 90–130% of the CPU.
After a few minutes, the beach ball stops and iTunes works fine...for a while. Double clicking on any audio file on my desktop, sets off the spinning beach ball again for another three minutes, at which time iTunes becomes responsive again, but the sound file does not play.
I've tried tossing the iTunes preferences and running Disk Warrior to no avail. I'm running 10.8.2 on my mid-2007 iMac. Any ideas/suggestions for troubleshooting?

Okay, I think I've finally solved my problem. I moved my entire iTunes library from one hard drive to another, then I deleted everything from iTunes (selected all songs, hit delete key, but didn't delete songs from disk) and then reimported them by dragging my Music folder into iTunes.
I'm not sure if moving the songs from one disk to another really helped, but deleting and reinstalling the songs definitely did.
I actually let iTunes perform a "scan for music" to reinstall the tracks, but that never seems to bring in everything. I had to drag in all of my compilation disks and some other miscellaneous tracks. P.I.T.A.
But, the good news is iTunes no longer hangs.

Whirring hard drive and beach ball timer

Hey guys
This problem is in a G5 iMac (without iSight) with an airport extreme card and a 80gig hard drive and super drive. It is not an intel based one as is over a year old and no warrenty left.
This fault is intermittent and sometimes everything works fine.
The other day it took litterally 15 minutes to load and then every time I asked it to do something like move the cursor it would hang and freeze.
So I booted from the install disks and ran a repair disk permissions then repair disk on the booting hard drive (an 80 gig one).
It had hundreds of disk permissions to repair then I got this message when running the disk repair.
===
Invalid Keylength
Volume check Failed
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)
Repair Attempt on 1 volume
0 HFS volumes repaired
1 volume could not be repaired
===
I ran this through the support section on this site and it said this was rare and I should erase and format the hard disk whilst booting from the install disk (which I did). Then installed the operating system again and everything was fine. Installed all the updates through software update adn it rebooted and everything was golden - started putting my images and files back on and still fine. Following day - same problems again!
Hard Drive sounds like it is searching the entire disk for a piece of information that aint there. System hangs and the beach ball comes up. This can happen when just moving the cursor before I even open any software.
Any suggestions?
Any advice?
Is the Hard Drive just knackered?
All help greatly appreciated.

"OK I have got disk warrior and used this and it says the SMART disk systems says the disk is running correctly and there are no errors on the disk."
Hopefully, you ran DW from the CD.
If DW reported no errors and/or repaired none, then I would run the Tiger DVD test again to see if it reports the same errors again! I am concerned about the one it could not repair initially:
Volume check Failed
DW should have seen & repaired the above!

Mavericks mail hanging (spinning beach ball)

Since upgrading yesterday the Mail application is constantly freezing (spinning beach ball) and the only option is force-quit. Sometimes happend when I try to draft a new mail, sometimes when I read and email and sometimes on its own when I come back to my computer.
I can make it happen 100% of the time when I try toselect Mail > Preferences
The dialog never comes up and I get the spinning beach ball.
Date/Time:       2013-10-24 04:09:07 -0700
OS Version:      10.9 (Build 13A603)
Architecture:    x86_64
Report Version: 18
Command:         Mail
Path:            /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail
Version:         7.0 (1816)
Build Version:   1
Project Name:    Mail
Source Version: 1816000000000000
Parent:          launchd [233]
PID:             5822
Event:           hang
Duration:        15.48s
Steps:           15 (100ms sampling interval)

Same problem. Tried everything. I've looked a lot of places and tried a lot of things- and logged nearly 15 hours of time with the highest level of Apple support and got nowhere. Even had them harvest my data logs and uploaded all of that.
Then I found a post on another messageboard that did it for me. Take a look at your:
username/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Accounts.plist
Instead of being a few KB (as it should have been), mine was 40 MB with tens of thousands of duplicated Hotmail account entries.
I knew all of my mail settings, so I just trashed this file and relaunched the app, then manually added back all of my mail account settings via the mail interface.
Poof- no more issues. No Mail hang. No preference files launching and eating up enormous CPU and RAM. No problems whatsoever. Hope it helps you all too.
Note: this does not eliminate messages, only settings. So the fix takes all of 5 minutes if you remember your mail server settings.
Cheers.

Peak files and beach balls in MAC Premiere CS4

Hello all,
I having an issue, or should I say issues with Premiere CS4 on a networked Mac, and mac drive. Everytime I go to open a project premiere generates new peak files, which makes opening a 2 minute proj take like 20 minutes. And also it places a bunch of peak files in the folder which takes up space.
Also, everytime I switch programs (like say go from Premiere to Safari, and back to Premiere) or the computer sits for a bit of time, I get the beach ball (of death) for like 5+ minutes before I can do anything with the project. This only happens on my computer, of which we have 4 networked and 1 is connected direct to the network drive which is a Lacie brand Quadra.
PLEASE HELP!!!!!! Hahaha.
Thanks,
Greg

Greg,
As you know, the .PEK files are the Waveform Display. The .CFA files are the Conformed Audio. These are necessary for PrPro to edit, and to have the Waveform displayed.
My guess would be that PrPro is loosing these, because of the networked environment. I'd try with the Assets copied to the local HDD, and make sure that all Scratch Disks are located locally, as well. If this works, once PrPro has gone through the process of .PEK and .CFA writing, so long as these files are not moved, that should be it, and PrPro should be able to find these files and use them, without additional Conforming and PEK generation.
I've had similar occur on mapped network drives, and just doing the copy and redirecting PrPro to those copies (Relink Media) has cured it. I now only use network drives as storage for Assets, and not to provide same to PrPro for editing.
Good luck,
Hunt

Printers and beach balls on Macbook

Whenever I attempt to print anything all I get is beachballs. I cannot delete the printers and reinstall becasue I get beachballs when I go into the settings. No recent software updates and no recent changes to my network or anything like that. Any thoughts?

Hi @AugieMom!
I understand your getting a beach ball on your Mac when attempting to print. I would recommend running a repair disk permission. A repair disk permission will speed up the Mac and resolve issues like beach balling.
I have located a quick YouTube tutorial regarding Clean/Speed Up Your Mac "Repair Permissions" - Mac Speed
Once the repair disk permissions is complete just close the window and restart the Mac. After the computer reboots check to see if you are able to print without getting the beach ball.
Hope that helps and thanks again for posting on the HP Forums.
Let me know how it goes!
Cbert
I work on behalf of HP.
Please click “Accept as Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.
Click the “Kudos, Thumbs Up" at the bottom of this post to say “Thanks” for helping!

Bluetooth causing finder hanging and beach balls

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for