IMac full of beach balls

I have the new 2009, iMac i7 and after the firmware update I now seem to be getting beach balls all the time. It tends to hang and after a few minutes is will respond to all the clicks I made in the interim. Anyone else having this issue?

Some procedural tests to help narrow down the cause...
Try starting up in Safe Mode
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455
This will run some maintenance during startup, and start up with only Apple's essential system extensions and processes running. If you do not experience the "beach balls" in Safe Mode, it is possible that you have some third-party software installed that is causing interference when booted normally. It is also possible that the Safe Mode maintenance actions fixed something.
You can also try creating a new admin user account in System Preferences Accounts pane
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8235.html
Log out and log in to the new account. Does the same problem recur in the new user account? If it does not, the cause is likely to be something in your normal user account. If it does recur in the new account, then the cause is likely to be at the system (OS) level, or possibly hardware-related.

Similar Messages

Imac runs slow beach ball all the time, imac runs slow beach ball all the time

can any one help imac runs very slow and every click the beach ball is at hand is this thing going to crash

Hi DylanLauren,
From your post I see that your Mac is running slower than it should be. There are several things that may attribute to this slowness, of which you can find troubleshooting in the article linked to below.
OS X Lion: If your Mac runs slowly
Take care,
Alex H.

IMac late 2009 - beach ball of death

My iMac is hanging a ridiculous amount - Every 30 seconds or so, no matter how few applications are running, I get the beach ball of death. It'll typically stall for a minute or more. Ugh.
I upgraded the RAM to see if that would fix the problem, and it didn't (the computer still hangs when available RAM is in excess of 10GB). I've run the Apple Hardware Test, and there were no problems reported. I've run virus scans, and there were no problems reported. I've upgraded the machine to OSX Lion, and have all of my software updated to current versions.
Please let me know if you have any ideas for a solution!
System specs:
iMac Late 2009, 21.5 inch
Processor 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 12 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 4670 256 MB
Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 (11C74)
Thanks,
Mike

Yes... took it back to Mac Store who sent it to their depot who did a deeper scan and it was a failing harddrive. Thank goodness for Time Machine and having backups... I am not as stressed as I would have been. However, they reinstalled it with Snow Leopard instead of my purchased Mountain Lion. When I brought it home I imported from Time Machine. But another issue reared its head and fought with its password issues (seriously, hours of work there) only to find that I could not upgrade from SL to ML on my disc. I did a check for software update from the Apple Icon (no Apple Store in SL) and it downloaded 1.6 GB of 5 updates (what appears to be the Java and others that are making the rounds currently). When this installed I was unable to log in at all, unable to get past the login screen, with some heavy duty serious lag and blue screens. So I am BACK at the Mac Store and having them do a complete wipe (again) and installation of Mountail Lion this time. In theory I should be able to take my machine with a new harddrive, Mountain Lion installed, back home and import form Time Machine.
Preach it from the rooftops and mountains... buy an external hard drive and install Time Machine. Seriously! Do it now! I am very happy that I finally, after a year, got around to doing this in time.

IMac Super Slow - Beach Ball of Death always spinning

I am new to all this. My iMac is on a wireless network at home and has been running uber slow. I checked under Activity Monitr and see that the pie Chart under the System Memory tab, has a small green sliver of available memory. there is a HUGE red portion which says Wired: Total amount of physical memory that cannot be paged to disk.
What the heck does that mean? How do I see what is contained there and I can I delete some of it? The only thin running is my printer, mouse (wireless) keyboard and Time Machine back-up up disk.
I appreciate any help.
Ann

How much free space do,you have left on your startup drive?
Select the drive icon, on your desktop, then hold the command-I keys on your keyboard to bring up the info pane for your startup drive.
It sounds to me like you need more RAM memory.
Your iMac can take a max. RAM amount of 6 GBs.
Here's a reliable Mac RAM seller
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/memory/iMac
And here's the procedure for installing it into your iMac
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1423

Spinning beach ball on yosemite

iMac gets spinning beach ball every so often. I must wait for about 5 minutes to get back control. HD only half full. Plenty of RAM. Activity monitor doesn't show high usage of CPU or RAM when beach ball spins. Please help.

HD only half full. Plenty of RAM.
How large is your HD and how much space do you have left?
How much RAM do you have?
Which model iMac are you using?
Check out: Troubleshoot the spinning beach ball/freezing & crashing
Troubleshoot the spinning beach ball

Spinning beach ball woes on 27 inch iMac

We have a mid 2010 27 inch iMac (and also a late 2010 13 inch MacBook Air, from which I am writing this post). About 6 months ago it was starting to get spinning beach balls, which I attributed to not having updated the OS (then 10.7). Having upgraded the Air to Mavericks with success, I also upgraded the iMac to Mavericks, and the beach balls got much, much worse, rendering the thing nearly unusable. I cannot for the life of me figure out what the issue is, particularly because the Air, which is about the same vintage, is working great under the same setup. Can someone who has not been staring at this problem for 6 months help?
Here's what I've got:
As I mentioned, mid 2010 27-inch iMac, 1TB hard drive, about half-full, backing up to a 2 TB Time Capsule.
We have two wifi networks to cover the whole house; one is integrated with the cable company's provided router and sits in the basement, and the other is the Time Capsule hooked up to the cable company's VoIP router upstairs. Because you cannot use the Time Capsule to extend an existing network if it is not an Apple network, I resorted to setting each wifi network up independently (separately connected to ethernet). My Air navigates this just fine, as do our iPads/iPhones, and I don't notice a speed difference between the two networks (assuming I have equally good reception wherever I am).
Notably, the Time Capsule seems to randomly stop broadcasting wifi every now and then (at intervals of a few days to a couple weeks), which requires a restart to get it working again. (This could be totally unrelated.)
The iMac was at 10.7 when the beach balls started; upgrading to Mavericks made the slowness/beachballs worse. As I noted, Mavericks did not cause any trouble with the Air.
The beach balls seem to coincide with a complete stall in everything the computer is doing. After the stall ends, the computer can be fairly speedy, so it's as if it pauses for several seconds to a minute or so to think very hard, and then goes back to its business.
There is usually a slight improvement if I shut down and boot up again, but it gums up pretty quickly.
Here's what I've done:
Started with 4GB RAM; added another 8 (total 12) after this all started. Equally bad before and after.
Stared at Activity Monitor and Console for long periods of time while watching for beach balls to try to detect a pattern.
In Activity Monitor, memory pressure is fine (esp. now that I added 8 GB), no swap used. The two worst offenders under CPU usage seem to be kernel_task or WindowServer, but they are not always monopolizing the CPU at the times when it is stalled.
In Console, the main two patterns seemed to be a frequent WindowServer "updates forcibly disabled" error, and what seemed like a constant browsing for wifi connections even though the computer was already connected to wifi. However, I couldn't figure out what either of these meant or what might be done to fix them.
Used disk utility, repaired permissions, verified disk, etc. - everything was ok, although some permissions were repaired.
Used third-party utilities, Onyx and iDefrag, to try to verify disk and clean things up. No significant problems detected, and no improvement.
Various other methods of cleaning up -- eliminating old software or files that aren't being used, emptying trash, taking extra files off the desktop, etc. In particular, having read that Mail might have issues handling Google accounts, I eliminated a heavily-used Google account from Mail and got a separate, lighter-weight third-party app to handle that account. That did seem improve things at first, but we seem to be back to slowness and beach balls again.
Final, last-ditch effort: backed up and then erased hard drive and (after another Disk Utility verify - still fine) did a clean install of Mavericks.
It took several attempts to download the installer using the Time Capsule network (kept stalling); switched to the other (non-Apple) wifi network and it downloaded and installed fine.
However, after the clean install, although it was not nearly as slow as before, amazingly, I still had spinning beach balls and hanging without having installed anything other than the OS.
I made several attempts to get into the backup to selectively reinstall files. Could not mount backup using Time Capsule -- option-clicking and selecting "Browse Other Backups" did not actually get me to the other backup. Using Migration Assistant, could not get the backup to load, or the loading was taking an inordinately long period of time, so I gave up. (Also, every time I tried to quit Migration Assistant to try to discover the problem with the backup loading, it hung and I had to hard-restart.)
So, since the clean install did not seem to fix the problem, and I was starting to worry about not being able to get to my backup, I have gone back to just restoring from the Time Capsule. It's telling me this will take over 200 hours.
The one thing I haven't tried is shutting down the computer, lugging it upstairs, and connecting it to Time Capsule via ethernet, at least for the restoration. I will do this if I leave the computer overnight and it's still not done in the morning.
I've done much searching of these discussion boards, and tried everything that seemed like a possible culprit. What am I missing? (Other than ditching this computer and buying a different one?)

We have a mid 2010 27 inch iMac (and also a late 2010 13 inch MacBook Air, from which I am writing this post). About 6 months ago it was starting to get spinning beach balls, which I attributed to not having updated the OS (then 10.7). Having upgraded the Air to Mavericks with success, I also upgraded the iMac to Mavericks, and the beach balls got much, much worse, rendering the thing nearly unusable. I cannot for the life of me figure out what the issue is, particularly because the Air, which is about the same vintage, is working great under the same setup. Can someone who has not been staring at this problem for 6 months help?
Here's what I've got:
As I mentioned, mid 2010 27-inch iMac, 1TB hard drive, about half-full, backing up to a 2 TB Time Capsule.
We have two wifi networks to cover the whole house; one is integrated with the cable company's provided router and sits in the basement, and the other is the Time Capsule hooked up to the cable company's VoIP router upstairs. Because you cannot use the Time Capsule to extend an existing network if it is not an Apple network, I resorted to setting each wifi network up independently (separately connected to ethernet). My Air navigates this just fine, as do our iPads/iPhones, and I don't notice a speed difference between the two networks (assuming I have equally good reception wherever I am).
Notably, the Time Capsule seems to randomly stop broadcasting wifi every now and then (at intervals of a few days to a couple weeks), which requires a restart to get it working again. (This could be totally unrelated.)
The iMac was at 10.7 when the beach balls started; upgrading to Mavericks made the slowness/beachballs worse. As I noted, Mavericks did not cause any trouble with the Air.
The beach balls seem to coincide with a complete stall in everything the computer is doing. After the stall ends, the computer can be fairly speedy, so it's as if it pauses for several seconds to a minute or so to think very hard, and then goes back to its business.
There is usually a slight improvement if I shut down and boot up again, but it gums up pretty quickly.
Here's what I've done:
Started with 4GB RAM; added another 8 (total 12) after this all started. Equally bad before and after.
Stared at Activity Monitor and Console for long periods of time while watching for beach balls to try to detect a pattern.
In Activity Monitor, memory pressure is fine (esp. now that I added 8 GB), no swap used. The two worst offenders under CPU usage seem to be kernel_task or WindowServer, but they are not always monopolizing the CPU at the times when it is stalled.
In Console, the main two patterns seemed to be a frequent WindowServer "updates forcibly disabled" error, and what seemed like a constant browsing for wifi connections even though the computer was already connected to wifi. However, I couldn't figure out what either of these meant or what might be done to fix them.
Used disk utility, repaired permissions, verified disk, etc. - everything was ok, although some permissions were repaired.
Used third-party utilities, Onyx and iDefrag, to try to verify disk and clean things up. No significant problems detected, and no improvement.
Various other methods of cleaning up -- eliminating old software or files that aren't being used, emptying trash, taking extra files off the desktop, etc. In particular, having read that Mail might have issues handling Google accounts, I eliminated a heavily-used Google account from Mail and got a separate, lighter-weight third-party app to handle that account. That did seem improve things at first, but we seem to be back to slowness and beach balls again.
Final, last-ditch effort: backed up and then erased hard drive and (after another Disk Utility verify - still fine) did a clean install of Mavericks.
It took several attempts to download the installer using the Time Capsule network (kept stalling); switched to the other (non-Apple) wifi network and it downloaded and installed fine.
However, after the clean install, although it was not nearly as slow as before, amazingly, I still had spinning beach balls and hanging without having installed anything other than the OS.
I made several attempts to get into the backup to selectively reinstall files. Could not mount backup using Time Capsule -- option-clicking and selecting "Browse Other Backups" did not actually get me to the other backup. Using Migration Assistant, could not get the backup to load, or the loading was taking an inordinately long period of time, so I gave up. (Also, every time I tried to quit Migration Assistant to try to discover the problem with the backup loading, it hung and I had to hard-restart.)
So, since the clean install did not seem to fix the problem, and I was starting to worry about not being able to get to my backup, I have gone back to just restoring from the Time Capsule. It's telling me this will take over 200 hours.
The one thing I haven't tried is shutting down the computer, lugging it upstairs, and connecting it to Time Capsule via ethernet, at least for the restoration. I will do this if I leave the computer overnight and it's still not done in the morning.
I've done much searching of these discussion boards, and tried everything that seemed like a possible culprit. What am I missing? (Other than ditching this computer and buying a different one?)

Since loading Lion, I've experienced much more instability than Snow Leopard. In particular, Mail crashes with regularity, full-screen apps seem to run slower and show the beach ball more often for longer, etc. I'm disappointed with the performance. Any

Since loading Lion, I've experienced much more instability than Snow Leopard. In particular, Mail crashes with regularity, full-screen apps seem to run slower and show the beach ball more often for longer, etc. I love the features, but I'm disappointed with the performance. Any help coming from Apple? I've been sending them so many reports after crashes, that their file must be full!

Summoning max. courage, I did what you advised. Here is the result. What does this tell you? My Lion 7.2 (mid 2011 iMac) has several annoying glitches (which I have so far tolerated through gritted teeth) but none that have actually stopped me working.
BTW, I see several items involving CleanMyMac which I did not know I had. It is generally villified as a trouble-maker. Spotlight can't find an app. or a utility of that name. How can I get rid of what's there please? Just delete?
Last login: Thu Nov 3 20:55:11 on console
Steve-Kirkbys-iMac:~ stevekirkby$ kextstat -kl | awk ' !/apple/ { print $6 $7 } '
com.AmbrosiaSW.AudioSupport(4.0)
Steve-Kirkbys-iMac:~ stevekirkby$ sudo launchctl list | sed 1d | awk ' !/0x|apple|com\.vix|edu\.|org\./ { print $3 } '
Password:
com.openssh.sshd
com.stclairsoft.DefaultFolderXAgent
com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper
com.bombich.ccc.scheduledtask.067493DB-2728-4DF3-87D8-092EF69086E8
com.bombich.ccc
com.adobe.SwitchBoard
Steve-Kirkbys-iMac:~ stevekirkby$ launchctl list | sed 1d | awk ' !/0x|apple|edu\.|org\./ { print $3 } '
com.sony.PMBPortable.AutoRun
uk.co.markallan.clamxav.freshclam
com.veoh.webplayer.startup
com.macpaw.CleanMyMac.volumeWatcher
com.macpaw.CleanMyMac.trashSizeWatcher
com.adobe.ARM.202f4087f2bbde52e3ac2df389f53a4f123223c9cc56a8fd83a6f7ae
com.adobe.AAM.Scheduler-1.0
Steve-Kirkbys-iMac:~ stevekirkby$ ls -1A {,/}Library/{Ad,Compon,Ex,Fram,In,La,Mail/Bu,P*P,Priv,Qu,Scripti,Sta}* 2> /dev/null
/Library/Components:
/Library/Extensions:
/Library/Frameworks:
AEProfiling.framework
AERegistration.framework
ApplicationEnhancer.framework
AudioMixEngine.framework
FxPlug.framework
NyxAudioAnalysis.framework
PluginManager.framework
ProFX.framework
ProMetadataSupport.framework
TSLicense.framework
iLifeFaceRecognition.framework
iLifeKit.framework
iLifePageLayout.framework
iLifeSQLAccess.framework
iLifeSlideshow.framework
/Library/Input Methods:
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins:
AdobePDFViewer.plugin
EPPEX Plugin.plugin
Flash Player.plugin
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin
JavaAppletPlugin.plugin
Quartz Composer.webplugin
QuickTime Plugin.plugin
SharePointBrowserPlugin.plugin
SharePointWebKitPlugin.webplugin
Silverlight.plugin
flashplayer.xpt
iPhotoPhotocast.plugin
nsIQTScriptablePlugin.xpt
/Library/LaunchAgents:
com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist
com.sony.PMBPortable.AutoRun.plist
/Library/LaunchDaemons:
com.adobe.SwitchBoard.plist
com.apple.remotepairtool.plist
com.bombich.ccc.plist
com.bombich.ccc.scheduledtask.067493DB-2728-4DF3-87D8-092EF69086E8.plist
com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist
com.stclairsoft.DefaultFolderXAgent.plist
/Library/PreferencePanes:
.DS_Store
Application Enhancer.prefPane
Default Folder X.prefPane
DejaVu.prefPane
Flash Player.prefPane
Flip4Mac WMV.prefPane
/Library/PrivilegedHelperTools:
com.bombich.ccc
com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper
com.stclairsoft.DefaultFolderXAgent
/Library/QuickLook:
iWork.qlgenerator
/Library/QuickTime:
AppleIntermediateCodec.component
AppleMPEG2Codec.component
DesktopVideoOut.component
DivX 6 Decoder.component
FCP Uncompressed 422.component
Flip4Mac WMV Advanced.component
Flip4Mac WMV Export.component
Flip4Mac WMV Import.component
LiveType.component
/Library/ScriptingAdditions:
.DS_Store
Adobe Unit Types.osax
Default Folder X Addition.osax
/Library/StartupItems:
Library/Address Book Plug-Ins:
Library/Frameworks:
EWSMac.framework
Library/Input Methods:
.localized
Library/Internet Plug-Ins:
Library/LaunchAgents:
com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist
com.adobe.ARM.202f4087f2bbde52e3ac2df389f53a4f123223c9cc56a8fd83a6f7ae.plist
com.macpaw.CleanMyMac.trashSizeWatcher.plist
com.macpaw.CleanMyMac.volumeWatcher.plist
com.veoh.webplayer.startup.plist
uk.co.markallan.clamxav.freshclam.plist
Library/PreferencePanes:
.DS_Store
Perian.prefPane
WindowShade X.prefPane
Library/QuickTime:
AC3MovieImport.component
Perian.component
Library/ScriptingAdditions:
Steve-Kirkbys-iMac:~ stevekirkby$

Beach Ball of Death on my 24" iMac 2.8GHz duo, 4 MB Ram, 750 GB HD

Hello all:
Maybe I got one of the first ones off the line? Ordered it on release day in September.
I'm having Beach Ball problems, lots of freezes in Firefox, Excel, SLOOOOWWW response on saves, goofy problems dragging and dropping files. Coupla Hard restarts, LOTS of restarts.
Anybody else out there with same/similar problems?
Steve

I keep getting the same thing, using similar software. I am running a slightly older iMac - 24" 2.33MHz (pre-aluminum), with 2GB RAM and a 500 GB hard drive.
Over time, the crashes get worse, and eventually the system software needs to be reinstalled. About six months ago, I decided to partition the hard drive in the hope that I could isolate the problem to the boot partition and save other files/data. This DOES work - only the boot partition goes bad. Disk Warrior can't rebuild it, but it make a lot of repairs and does recover most of the files. But this never fixes it - it seems to be a stop-gap, and eventually the partition fails again.
I just reinstalled the system software after another crash today that killed the partition. I have read about the "iMac Update 1.1" as being a potential culprit, so I am not doing any updates.
I have been keeping Console running, hoping to get a clue. Everything it reports is far too arcane for me to understand, but here are some expamples of what it reports:
Every hour exactly, it spits out
"-computer kernel[0]: SetCryptoKey R: len 32, idx 2
("idx" flips back and forth between 1 and 2 each error.)
Here is a copy of some of the previous logs:
Oct 11 01:22:15 christopher-czuras-computer kernel[0]: node=9248 fileID=4 volume=Boot Drive device=/dev/disk0s2
Oct 11 01:22:15 christopher-czuras-computer kernel[0]: hfsswapBTNode: offsets 9 and 10 out of order (0x0000, 0x0000)
Oct 11 01:22:15 christopher-czuras-computer kernel[0]: node=9248 fileID=4 volume=Boot Drive device=/dev/disk0s2
Oct 11 01:22:15 christopher-czuras-computer kernel[0]: hfsswapBTNode: offsets 9 and 10 out of order (0x0000, 0x0000)
Oct 11 01:22:15 christopher-czuras-computer kernel[0]: node=9248 fileID=4 volume=Boot Drive device=/dev/disk0s2
Oct 11 01:22:15 christopher-czuras-computer kernel[0]: hfsswapBTNode: offsets 9 and 10 out of order (0x0000, 0x0000)
Oct 11 01:22:15 christopher-czuras-computer kernel[0]: node=9248 fileID=4 volume=Boot Drive device=/dev/disk0s2
Oct 11 01:22:15 christopher-czuras-computer kernel[0]: hfsswapBTNode: offsets 9 and 10 out of order (0x0000, 0x0000)
Oct 11 01:22:15 christopher-czuras-computer kernel[0]: node=9248 fileID=4 volume=Boot Drive device=/dev/disk0s2
Oct 11 21:29:21 christopher-czuras-computer kernel[0]: hfsswapBTNode: invalid forward link (0x5A5A5A5A)
Oct 11 21:29:21 christopher-czuras-computer kernel[0]: node=9299 fileID=4 volume=Boot Drive device=/dev/disk0s2
Oct 11 21:29:31 christopher-czuras-computer kernel[0]: hfsswapBTNode: invalid forward link (0x5A5A5A5A)
Oct 11 21:29:31 christopher-czuras-computer kernel[0]: node=9299 fileID=4 volume=Boot Drive device=/dev/disk0s2
Oct 11 21:30:53 christopher-czuras-computer sudo: root : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/ ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/bin/launchctl unload //System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.usbmuxd.plist
Oct 11 21:30:54 christopher-czuras-computer sudo: root : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/ ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/bin/launchctl load //System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.usbmuxd.plist
Oct 11 21:30:59 christopher-czuras-computer kernel[0]: Resetting IOCatalogue.
Oct 11 21:30:59 christopher-czuras-computer kextd[25]: 0 cached, 370 uncached personalities to catalog
Oct 11 21:31:12 christopher-czuras-computer kernel[0]: hfsswapBTNode: invalid forward link (0x5A5A5A5A)
Oct 11 21:31:12 christopher-czuras-computer kernel[0]: node=9299 fileID=4 volume=Boot Drive device=/dev/disk0s2
On the last crash that I could recover from, the console showed this:
disk 0s2:0xe0030003 (UNDEFINED).
jnl: dojnlio:strategy err 0x5
jnl: writejournalheader:error writing the journal header!
This time, Mail was the first program to freeze (it has also been FireFox or Safari), and one processor was running at nearly full speed, according to Activity Monitor, prior to complete lockup.
Any clues???
thanks
chris

IMac Spinning Beach Ball

I just bought an iMac about 4 months ago and it already is getting beach ball spins of up to 1 minute long. If I wait the full minute it stops and everything seems to go back to normal, until a little later in the day when it does it again. It will do this at least 3 to 4 times a day. I have over 100GBs of free space in my Hard Drive, 4GB of Ram....I've tried different Ram sticks. I can't pin point it to any specific application either. It is starting to get really annoying. I've done repairs on the disk and that hasn't done anything. I've also tried to check the disk with the repair utility in the install disk.
Can anyone assist me on what this could be? I'm new to macs and I am a little puzzled if this is normal behavior?

I would recommend reading this article:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/sbbod.html
It should give you some insight into what's happening and how to prevent the beach balls.
We really can't tell what is happening because you haven't provided much information. Next time please let us know what applications you are running and what you were doing when it began. Also we have no idea what the configuration of your iMac is so please complete your profile.
Regards,
Roger

Just installed iMac firmware update - iphoto no longer works (beach ball)

I just installed the most recent iMac and keyboard firmware updates. Now when i try to use iphoto it opens quickly and then as soon as i try to do anything i get the spinning beach ball until i force quit. I have no idea how to fix this. I have rebooted and the same results.
Any ideas?

Well it somehow fixed itself ... now everything works fine ... hopefully it doesn't return.
Thank you.

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

IMac 20" was running very slow (could not even scroll without the spinning beach ball of death), The computer was operating on OSX 10.5. After a lot of attempts of diagnostic attempts, have resorted to an erase and reinstall. says it will take 60 hours!

Working on my friends iMac 20" computer. It is 2.66 ghz, and was running 4mb of ram when the computer started acting up on OSX 10.5.
When I was called over the computer was so slow that I could not even scroll without getting the beach ball of death. I checked the activities moniter, and found an HP application was taking up 46% of the CPU. We attempted to go in and uninstall all of the HP applications, but the computer ended up freezing. Ended up doing a hard shut down, and decided to run disk utilities. Repaired both Permissions, and Disk. Restarted... no difference. Thought of restoring the computer to when it was working fine via Time machine in disk utility mode... failed. Finally resorted to deleting the hard drive, reinstalling Tiger, and upgrading.
After what seemed like forever for the hard drive to erease, attempted to reinstall. Ended up taking almost an hour to verify the disk, and then announced, that it would take 58+ hours to install. After leaving it for 3 hours, the number was going up, and was not installing.
I then thought the problem would be the 2nd party ram. We replaced the paired 2mb's to give 4mb's with the origional paired 1mb's providing now 2 mb's. Attempted to reinstall osx. Same problem 60+ hours after 3 hours of letting it sit.
What to do now? Is it the logic board? Could it be a faulty hard drive? Should I attempt in firewire more from another computer? Do a 7 pass erase over the hard drive? Run Disk warrior?
If anyone could give some info on why this is so blessedly slow that would be great thanks!

Decided to try and chek out the hard drive more extensively. SMART, states that it is verified. After running Diskwarrior and repairing all of the disk and the permissions, and running a hardware test, everything seemed to be running fine.
Went back to disk utilities, checked disk and permissions again, verified. SMART states it is verified.
Attemping now to install Mac OSX 10.4.7 from the original install disk. I am currently attemting the basic install, no programs, nothing. It has been over an hour, It is 44% of installing the base system Part 1, announcing 5 hours and 53 minutes.
When I did erase the hard drive yes I selected to write over zeros once. I then erased a second time from Diskwarrior.

IMac 10.6.8 Spinning Beach Ball-Need Help

I have a 27" iMac running OS 10.6.8, it was bought new in 2010, has a 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM, I have about 450 GB free on my 1TB Hard Drive. The problem I am having is that I get the spinning beach ball all the time. It is not dependent on a program, sometimes it will do it right after boot, other times it will work find for days. I backed up all files on to an external drive, not using Time Machine, formatted the drive, reinstalled OS 10.6 from the original DVD, copied my files back to the computer. Worked fine for about 2 weeks, then the problem came back. Took the computer to the Apple Store, and they had the computer for over a week running test on it. They could not find anything wrong with it. The problem did happen for them, but they could not find the cause. They suggested buying a new Hard Drive from them, having them put it in, and installing OS 10.8, for a cost of over $500. I have tried resetting the NVRAM, repairing disk, and repairing disk permissions, no change. I have booted in Safe Boot, and the problem will happen in Safe Boot as well. I have ran the Apple Hardware Test from the Install DVD, even under the extened test it could not find anything wrong.
Sometimes after waiting a long time the computer will start to work again, most of the time you have to hold the power button to shut it down and boot it back up. I have tired to watch the CPU and RAM, but they stay low CPU usage, under 10% and RAM is over 50% free.
Software running on the computer is Photoshop with Bridge CS3, MS Office X, and Toast. I had Carbonite for backup, but uninstalled that.

They suggested buying a new Hard Drive from them, having them put it in
Apple has a 90 day warranty on all repairs. Strongly suggest that you take the computer right back to them and/or call Apple tech support.
When it’s time to pick up your computer from the repair shop:
*** Before you leave the repair shop, make sure you have the repair tech(s) power the comp up and demonstrate that it is indeed working & repaired properly to your satisfaction.***

I have a 4 yr. old iMac. I recently got a trojan on it that sent out emails to my address book. I got Norton Internet Security for Mac, and now my Mac is running slow, with way too many spinning beach balls of death. Was it a mistake to install Norton?

I have a 4 yr. old iMac. I recently got a trojan on it that sent out emails to my address book. I got Norton Internet Security for Mac, and now my Mac is running slow, with way too many spinning beach balls of death. Was it a mistake to install Norton?

yankeecat wrote:
I have a 4 yr. old iMac. I recently got a trojan on it that sent out emails to my address book.
There is no such Trojan or other malware known today that will do that using OS X nor has there ever been one. The most probable explanation is that somebody hacked into your e-mail account on the server, so you should change that password to something stronger right away. If it had come from your Mac then there would almost certainly be copies of those messages in your Sent Mail mailbox.

IMac 24 C2D freezing, beach ball, pinwheel

Hello wonderful user community!
I am helping my wife with this issue, she's never posted on the ASC before.
In the last two weeks my iMac has started behaving strangely.   It doesn't seem to matter whether running Spotify, Chrome, Firefox, or other applications, I will get beach balls, seemingly at random intervals. If watching a video on Youtube or Netflix, the picture will freeze the but the audio will continue. You can't Force Quit or make any commands in other applications, so it seems to be system wide. If someone is playing a video from my hard drive from the LAN, their video playback will freeze. After 15 secs to a minute or more, the machine will resume normal operation.
What I've tried:
The OS was installed less than a year ago from 10.6 disk and updated to OS 10.6.8 using Combo Updater.
Disk Repair Permisions
Disk Repair (boot from external drive)
reset PRAM
Take to Genius Desk at Apple store (results inconclusive, no hardware issues)
Activity Monitor shows no app in particular hanging
I'm about to cut and run on this thing, put it on Craigslist, and move on.
Any light shed on this would be incredibly helpful. I work from this iMac while my daughter watches videos on a 2nd monitor throughout the day. At night it's our TV and we watch movies on it. Needless to say it's an integral part of our lifestyle.
Hardware Overview:
Model Name:          iMac
Model Identifier:          iMac9,1
Processor Name:          Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:          2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors:          1
Total Number Of Cores:          2
L2 Cache:          6 MB
Memory:          8 GB
Bus Speed:          1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version:          IM91.008D.B08
SMC Version (system):          1.45f0
Serial Number (system):          YD9*****0TG   <Serial Number Edited by Host>
Hardware UUID:          93EC2F20-E293-50E4-9EC3-F0401B5D8D65
Console sample taken during time period of several hangs:
2/20/12 8:56:32 PM
[0x0-0x13013].com.SugarSync.Manager[262]
[Mon Feb 20 20:56:32 2012:405406] [info] [datastore.sync.syncset] [0xb0617000] [Start syncing /sc/5000]
2/20/12 8:56:47 PM
[0x0-0x13013].com.SugarSync.Manager[262]
[Mon Feb 20 20:56:47 2012:405079] [info] [datastore.volumerelayclient] [0xb0617000] [getBucketChangeId timed out. bucket id: 5000]
2/20/12 8:56:47 PM
[0x0-0x13013].com.SugarSync.Manager[262]
[Mon Feb 20 20:56:47 2012:405145] [error] [datastore.sync.syncset] [0xb0617000] [ScVolumeSyncer.cpp:1644 getBucketChid failed for path /sc/5000]
2/20/12 8:56:47 PM
[0x0-0x13013].com.SugarSync.Manager[262]
[Mon Feb 20 20:56:47 2012:405168] [info] [datastore.sync.manager] [0xb0617000] [restartWithDelay. syncPath = /sc/5000, delay = 600 sec]
2/20/12 9:01:54 PM
[0x0-0x25025].com.spotify.client[317]
05:01:54.340 I [social_presence.cpp:120] Presence: A track was played
2/20/12 9:01:55 PM
[0x0-0x25025].com.spotify.client[317]
05:01:55.352 I [snd:517] 64k-Latency: 2 ms. Play latency: 184 ms (ap)
2/20/12 9:06:47 PM
[0x0-0x13013].com.SugarSync.Manager[262]
[Mon Feb 20 21:06:47 2012:405283] [info] [datastore.sync.syncset] [0xb0617000] [Stop syncing /sc/5000]
2/20/12 9:06:47 PM
[0x0-0x13013].com.SugarSync.Manager[262]
[Mon Feb 20 21:06:47 2012:405353] [info] [datastore.sync.syncset] [0xb0617000] [Start syncing /sc/5000]
2/20/12 9:07:02 PM
[0x0-0x13013].com.SugarSync.Manager[262]
[Mon Feb 20 21:07:02 2012:404888] [info] [datastore.volumerelayclient] [0xb0617000] [getBucketChangeId timed out. bucket id: 5000]
2/20/12 9:07:02 PM
[0x0-0x13013].com.SugarSync.Manager[262]
[Mon Feb 20 21:07:02 2012:404974] [error] [datastore.sync.syncset] [0xb0617000] [ScVolumeSyncer.cpp:1644 getBucketChid failed for path /sc/5000]
2/20/12 9:07:02 PM
[0x0-0x13013].com.SugarSync.Manager[262]
[Mon Feb 20 21:07:02 2012:405016] [info] [datastore.sync.manager] [0xb0617000] [restartWithDelay. syncPath = /sc/5000, delay = 600 sec]
2/20/12 9:08:15 PM
[0x0-0x25025].com.spotify.client[317]
05:08:15.352 I [social_presence.cpp:120] Presence: A track was played
2/20/12 9:08:16 PM
[0x0-0x25025].com.spotify.client[317]
05:08:16.228 I [snd:517] 64k-Latency: 3 ms. Play latency: 195 ms (ap)
2/20/12 9:14:26 PM
[0x0-0x25025].com.spotify.client[317]
05:14:26.646 I [social_presence.cpp:120] Presence: A track was played
2/20/12 9:14:33 PM
[0x0-0x25025].com.spotify.client[317]
05:14:33.708 I [snd:517] 64k-Latency: 2 ms. Play latency: 6179 ms (ap)
2/20/12 9:15:36 PM
[0x0-0x25025].com.spotify.client[317]
05:15:36.315 I [offline-mgr:2144] Storage has been cleaned
2/20/12 9:17:02 PM
[0x0-0x13013].com.SugarSync.Manager[262]
[Mon Feb 20 21:17:02 2012:405144] [info] [datastore.sync.syncset] [0xb0617000] [Stop syncing /sc/5000]
2/20/12 9:17:02 PM
[0x0-0x13013].com.SugarSync.Manager[262]
[Mon Feb 20 21:17:02 2012:405274] [info] [datastore.sync.syncset] [0xb0617000] [Start syncing /sc/5000]
2/20/12 9:17:17 PM
[0x0-0x13013].com.SugarSync.Manager[262]
[Mon Feb 20 21:17:17 2012:405045] [info] [datastore.volumerelayclient] [0xb0617000] [getBucketChangeId timed out. bucket id: 5000]
2/20/12 9:17:17 PM
[0x0-0x13013].com.SugarSync.Manager[262]
[Mon Feb 20 21:17:17 2012:405155] [error] [datastore.sync.syncset] [0xb0617000] [ScVolumeSyncer.cpp:1644 getBucketChid failed for path /sc/5000]
2/20/12 9:17:17 PM
[0x0-0x13013].com.SugarSync.Manager[262]
[Mon Feb 20 21:17:17 2012:405181] [info] [datastore.sync.manager] [0xb0617000] [restartWithDelay. syncPath = /sc/5000, delay = 600 sec]

meow3cjc wrote:
I did study XLab's article before posting here, and I did check the Activity monitor for oddities and found none.
Another clue: When watching a DVD disc, there are no freezes. This is the ONLY time we don't experience the 15 minute freeze cycle. Starting to think the harddrive is failing...
If you suspect the HD is failing then run Apple Hardware Test in Extended Mode , it is wise to run the test 2-3 times to be sure. If it picks up any error codes then you should plan on visiting an Apple Store or AASP to get it fixed and the codes interpreted. Apple does not publish what codes are interpreted as however some will give you a good idea. For example if it has HDD in it then you know the error is related to the HD however you don't know if it's the drive itself or it possible it could be fan sensor for the HD, this is why it's smart to take it in.

IMac full of beach balls

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