IMac - spinning beach ball and freezing problems

I've had my white-screen Intel processor iMac for almost two years and its run incredibly well up until the last couple of weeks. Now whenever I switch applications, click on menus, play videos, etc the spinning beach ball appears on the screen for up to two minutes at a time. In some cases it gets so bad the computer needs to have a hard shut down.
This seems to happen in every application so its not only occurring when I'm doing certain tasks. When the beach ball appears it even pauses a song if its playing in iTunes.
I've already done a Command-S boot and also tried disk utility and both are telling me there aren't any hard drive problems.
Is anyone else having this kind of trouble? thanks

I'm having the same problem, but on my MacBook Pro... just started today. I'm even having a hard time filling out this web form.
I've run the UNIX maint scripts, repaired permissions, rebooted, everything simple... plenty of free ram, plenty of free HD space (53GB), no CPU usage (2-5% background stuff), no network traffic... just trying to use my Intel MacBook Pro...
Help!?

Similar Messages

  • IPHOTO 11 causing spinning beach ball and freezing. help

    I have a mid 2009 macbook with 2.3 dual core and 2 gb ram. i installed iPhoto 11 after a very successful  10.7.3 install. all was well then i began to import my photos from a thumb drive that i downloaded from a macbook pro onto a thumb drive. after few hiccups i realized i had a file that was stopping the import as it cam eup with the error message. so i deleted that and then about 3/4 of the way through the laptop just choked up and the spinning beach ball started and wouldnt stop. couldnt get it to force quit etc..
    so after several days of attempts i gave up ended up having to do a safe reboot too  many times and have now deleted iphoto and all its contents. my mac is working alebit is a bit sluggishly.
    any help? is this due to just 2 gig of ram do i need more ram? i am at a loss and i really need to upload these photos but it just doesnt seems worth the hassle

    That shoots that theory down.  Try this:  launch iPhoto with the Option key held down and create a new, test library.  Import some photos and check to see if the same problem persists. If that library works without a problem your current library is suspect. 
    In that case if you have the space available on your hard drive and don't aready have a backup copy of the library make a temporary, backup copy (select the library and type Command+D) and apply the two fixes below in order as needed:
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    Launch iPhoto with the Command+Option keys held down and rebuild the library.
    Select the options identified in the screenshot. 
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    Click on the Create button.
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  • I am having trouble with a LaCie 526 monitor working with my new Mac Pro.  When I boot up, I see the sign-in screen for a second, then it disappears, reappears with some of the screen pixelated and the spinning beach ball -- and then freezes. Any thoughts

    The LaCie is connected via DVI to thunderbolt adapter.  It had been working, and then when I switched off the computer and restarted several days later, I see the signon screen flash quickly, followed by nothing, followed by the signon screen and spinning beach ball and it simply freezes.  Any thoughts?

    When you have kernel panics, the pertinent information is in the panic report.
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    ☞ 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 and start typing the name.
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              DIAGNOSTIC AND USAGE INFORMATION ▹ System Diagnostic Reports
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  • Spinning Beach Ball and computer freeze

    Tonight I continually receive the spinning beach ball. The computer freezes and I need to do a hard shutdown. I have run repair permissions several times. I do receive the modified and no repaire messages. I have traced message lines on the forum and it does not appear to be a serious issue. However, it does not change the fact I repeatedly get the spinning beach ball and after some period of time need to do a hard shutdown. At first this took place in Aperture only, but it did he same thing in other applications as well.
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    Start with http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/sbbod.html

  • 27 ", late 2010, iMac won't boot after turning on. Spinning beach ball and white screen.

    Probably a relatively simple fix, or series of steps, that will return it to normal.

    BD,
    It's been a while, but I have since upgraded RAM to 12Gb and gone to Mavericks 10.9.4. Everything has run well until recently. Time Machine will not function on a new Seagate, 1TB GoFlex external HD,even though it was properly formatted and HFS journaled. Seagate techs said it seems to be a failing drive, yet it works perfectly on my laptop, a 15" MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion.  The drive completes less than 10% of the backup before it locks everything up on the iMac with the spinning beach ball and a gray screen.  Left it that way for two days and no change.  Removed the drive physically and the iMac works just fine. I am baffled and really a bit frustrated here and wonder if you, or anyone else, has an idea about correcting this? I am suspecting that there is something deeper in the system going on than I am seeing.
    I have run a verification of Disc Permissions/Repairs and keep getting this coming up:  "Permissions differ on “Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/Safari.help/Contents/Resources/inde x.html”; should be lrwxr-xr-x ; they are -rwxr-xr-x ."
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  • HT1338 I cant upload photos to send as email i keep geeting the spinning beach ball that freezes

    I cant upload photos to send as email i keep geeting the spinning beach ball that freezes the whole system can anybody tel me how to get ovet this problem please (explain for a dummy please)

    Hi,
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    My iChat/Messages pic is the same Signature pic as used here and is in the Recents Tab on show.
    You can even use the Camera if one is attached (Mac Minis and Mac Pro require External Cameras).
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    9:47 PM      Saturday; December 22, 2012
    Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"
      iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
     G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
     MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
     Mac OS X (10.6.8),
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    "Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

  • Spinning beach ball and frozen spotlight on iMac

    I cannot use spotlight. The window opens and I cannot type in it because I get a spinning beach ball when the cursor is moved to that area. No matter what I do, it won't go away. I have run disk utilities, zapped the pram, run tech tool pro. Searching on this subject did bring up discussions of cache cleaner, but it appears it is no longer available for Snow Leopard (even though it appears you can download it from several places, it is really Lion Cache Cleaner). Relaunching the finder does not help. Restarting the machine doesn't help either, as soon as I try and use spotlight, the same thing happens. In fact, the whole right side of the menu bar causes the cursor to turn into the spinning ball. Any ideas?
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  • Beach Balls and freezes after installing Safari 3.1 and security update

    Hi,
    I just recently installed the safari 3.1 update and the security update. My machine is an iMac 2.4 GHz with 10.5.2. Prior to this, the machine only had one freeze (had to power off) which happened a about a month back. Since the update, 2 days ago, the machine seems to show the beach ball more often. On one specific occasion (happened when my son was using it), the Chess game was running, and the mouse cursor turned into a beach ball and everything froze - can only move the mouse cursor/beach ball but nothing else responded. Even hitting the caps lock key took minutes before the caps lock light came on. Me being a windows user for a long time, I was blindly trying to find the keyboard equivalent of ctrl-alt-del to pull up a process list of some kind so that I can kill the offending app. But was not successful, hence I had to power off.
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    Welcome to the Apple forums:
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    I especially never do a system update with any other update. I always do that one last, and wait for the dust to settle by reading this board first.
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  • Spinning beach ball and slower performance

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    Hi Todd, thanks for the reply.  Actually, I do have CS6 via my Creative Cloud membership but I'm having to work in 5.5 on this particular client's system for a project. 
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  • Spinning beach ball and black screen on my new macbook pro

    After great anticipation, I just updgraded to a new macbook pro from an ibook G4. For the most part, I am thrilled and applications open and web pages load quickly. Occassionally, though, I get spinning beach balls...with more frequency than I did with my ibook and in OS X native apps...such as Safari.
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    That is the automatic ambient light sensor doing it's thing.
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  • 2009 iMac spinning beach ball all the time except windows 7

    Please Help
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  • Imac Spinning Beach Ball after about 3 minutes of operation.

    I get the spinning beach ball (SBBOD) after a few minutes of operation. The hard drive is indexing as well.  I tried booting the computer in Safe Mode and I get NO beach ball and the computer seems to be perfectly fine.  I recently upgraded my hard drive about 6 months ago.  I am not sure if this is a hardware or software problem.  I also tried running the hardware test, but I downloaded lion via the App Store and pressing "D" at boot up doesn't do anything.  I am about ready to erase my hard drive and try to re-install my info from time machine.  Unfortunately, I haven't done a back up in quite a while.  Any suggestions?

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  • Spinning beach ball and no Finder icons

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    Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

  • Spinning beach ball and a restart

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    Message was edited by: jofima

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    Message was edited by: jofima

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