My cursor turns into a revolving rainbow disk. How do I repair this problem?

My cursor turns into a revolving rainbow disk and remains frozen in that state. The only way I can "unfreeze" the disk is to turn off the computer and reboot. What is causing the problem and how do I fix it without rebooting?

Thomas,
What you are referring to is called the Spinning Beach Ball of Death and can be caused by many things. One of the most prominent is a lack of RAM. Keep Activity Monitor open (Applications - Utilities - Activity Monitor) and the next time you have a SBBOD take a look at AM and see how much Free RAM you have. You will find this information under the System Memory tab. As a general rule of thumb if it's less than 500MB you probably need a RAM upgrade.
You can also read and apply information from the Spinning Beach Ball of Death article.
Also did you know you were posting in an iMac forum?
Roger

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My cursor turns into a revolving rainbow disk. How do I repair this problem?

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