Pinwheel of death

Hi, My macbook has been pretty speedy and has little issues except getting a little hot. Lately I have started using imovie. I have made a few small movies and it is a good editing tool. Well today whenever I try to use Imovie every few seconds when I go to click on something or change where I want to play the clip from, the pinwheel comes up for 3 or 4 seconds. I have gone into activity monitor and I barely have anything running or using up my cpu so I don't see the problem. Please help it really effects the speed I can do things.

Care to share which OS and iMovie versions you are using?

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My MacBook Pro is running very slow when using the internet and sometimes gives the pinwheel of death, any suggestions on how to fix?

My MacBook Pro is running very slow when using the internet and sometimes gives the pinwheel of death, any suggestions on how to fix?

<http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/sbbod.html>

I just replaced the hard drive for my Mac Pro, and I am trying to restore what is on my Time Capsule, but it wont connect, and only is giving me the pinwheel of death. What do i do?

I just replaced the hard drive for my Mac Pro, and I am trying to restore what is on my Time Capsule, but it wont connect, and only is giving me the pinwheel of death. What do i do?

You will need to boot from some alternate boot device to accomplish this, if you did not initialize the drive before installing it.
If you have another Mac, you may be able to use FireWire target disk mode.
If your MacBook has a DVD reader and you have a Mac OS X Installer/Utilities DVD, such as the one that shipped with it, you can boot from that DVD, answer only the "what Language" question, and wait a quarter minute for the MenuBar to be drawn. Then examine the Utilities menu or the Installer menu and Find Disk Utility.

TS3276 when I Open my Mail, I get the pinwheel of death and nothing else

When I try to open my mail, I get the pinwheel of death. Nothing happens. I have to force quit

Sounds like you want the "classic layout" (as in, the way Mail looked before Lion). Go to Mail -> Preferences, click the Viewing icon and check "Use classic layout."

Pinwheel of death during install

I am running Mac 10.7.5. I can download Flash just fine, but when I go to install it I get the pinwheel of death when it tries to retrieve. Any idea why this is happening? I have done the uninstall already and that didn't help. Thanks!

No sure it will solve your issue but, the pinwheel as you call it can usually be solved by repairing the ACLS and disk permissions.
Boot on recovery partition and go to the tool menu, select change password. A window will open ignore the reset password fields, go to the bottom of the window and click on repair ACL.
Then when completed select disk utility and repair the disk permissions, reboot and retry.

Nvidia drivers crashing in Adobe Bridge, spinning pinwheel of death

Twice so far in Adobe Bridge my system will randomly lock up with the spinning pinwheel of death. The console shows these lines at the time of the freeze:
8/12/12 9:47:44.000 PM kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel timeout!
8/12/12 9:47:45.000 PM kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x20 = PBDMA Error
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel timeout!
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: IOVendorGLContext::ReportGPURestart
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: 0000006e
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: 00000001 0000902d 00000000 00000000
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: 00000000 00000100 00000000 00000009
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: 00000000 00000000 00000000
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: 00000000 00000000
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: 0000006e
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: 00000001 0000902d 00000000 00000000
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: 00000000 00000100 00000000 00000009
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: 00000000 00000000 03000821
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: 00000000 00000000
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: 0000006e
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: 00000001 0000902d 00000000 00000000
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: 00000000 00000100 00000000 00000009
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: 00000000 00000000 00000000
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: 00000000 00000000
8/12/12 9:48:05.000 PM kernel[0]: NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x20 = PBDMA Error
This obviously points to the Nvidia drivers crashing, but why? I'm currently using an Nvidia GTX 460 768MB in my Mac Pro, and I've never had this problem with any other applications. It seems to only be Bridge.

And you are assuming that the 460 will be supported of course which is not a given. The 570 and 670 seems to be okay and some use GTX 4xx but they also realized it can be iffy for support.

Final Cut Freezing Constantly: Pinwheels of Death!

Hey all,
I am editing a project in Final Cut 7.0.3, and about every 5-10 minutes I have to stop editing for 1-3 minutes while the pinwheel of death spins 'round and 'round. The problem is specific to my Mac computer.... when I edit the project on a Macbook laptop, the project works fine, despite the fact that this Mac is immensely more powerful than the Macbook.
I've searched multiple on-line forums, and have already tried the following:
(1) Rebooted Final Cut Pro
(2) Rebooted the whole computer
(3) Rebooted the whole computer in safe mode (holding down the Shift key)
(4) Trashed my preferences
(5) Repaired disk permissions, verified disks, etc. (in Disk Utility)
(5) Checked to make sure I wasn't editing in some silly format like h.264
(7) Broke my larger sequence into many more tiny sequences of about five minutes each (and man, it takes forever to edit this way, and doesn't help that much).
Not sure if it's of any help, but here's some additional info:
The computer's processor is 2x3.2 GHZ Quat-Core Intel Xeon, memory is 8 GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-Dimm.
I'm editing EX-1 footage, and my Easy Setup looks like this:
My sequence settings look like this, which works brilliantly with my footage (no render bars--green, red, or otherwise):
Any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much in advance.

Hey there, David,
My media is stored on an external hard drive: a 2.0 TB Lacie drive, which is 1.9 TB full. My guess is that you'll tell me that this hard drive is too full and I should put media onto an emptier drive. This external hard drive is mirrored identically onto another hard drive of the same make and model. I use this mirrored drive (also 1.9 TB out of 2.0 full) with my Macbook laptop--same media, same project--and it works totally fine.
Oddly enough, my Mac boots off of a different eternal hard drive. Due to problems with the internal drive, the system drive is now a 500 GB Lacie external hard drive; it is used nearly exclusively for booting the system, so only 50 GB are in use. The hard drive is connected with a firewire 800, the fastest connection the hard drive allows. Is it possible that booting the system off an external is bogging the system down?
One final addition to this stockpile of notes is that a professional editor recently stopped by to help me with other Final Cut problems, and he felt strongly that we change our presets to XDCAM EX. Before then, I was using the preset Apple ProRes 422, as shown in the image below. XDCAM EX is compatible with the camera's footage I was using, which seems like a cleaner set-up: no green render bars, etc. However, I wasn't having any of these pinwheel problems before we changed the settings. Is it possible that editing with XDCAM EX as a sequence setting is somehow overwhelming Final Cut? I'm not doing anything too intense--I'm happy to edit in a lower resolution now, and render it out later, so long as this will not effect getting the highest possible resolution in the end.

Safari crashed and the mac keeps getting the pinwheel of death, especially when streaming. whats going on???

I was streaming a baseball game and safari crashed on me, i have a macbook air osx7.1. it said it sent a message to apple about the situation. been having problems with then pinwheel of death! especially when I'm streaming the pinwheel will pop up for no reason. does anyone have any idea what the problem could be??

Launch the Console 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 Console in the icon grid.
Step 1
For this step, the title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
          SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
          View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
In the top right corner of the Console window, there's a search box labeled Filter. Initially the words "String Matching" are shown in that box. Enter the name of the crashed application or process. For example, if iTunes crashed, you would enter "iTunes" (without the quotes.)
Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Select the messages from the time of the last crash, if any. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
☞ The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
☞ Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.
Step 2
In the Console window, select
          DIAGNOSTIC AND USAGE INFORMATION ▹ User Diagnostic Reports
(not Diagnostic and Usage Messages) from the log list on the left. There is a disclosure triangle to the left of the list item. If the triangle is pointing to the right, click it so that it points down. You'll see a list of crash reports. The name of each report starts with the name of the process, and ends with ".crash". Select the most recent report related to the process in question. The contents of the report will appear on the right. Use copy and paste to post the entire contents—the text, not a screenshot.
I know the report is long, maybe several hundred lines. Please post all of it anyway.
If you don't see any reports listed, but you know there was a crash, you may have chosen Diagnostic and Usage Messages from the log list. Choose DIAGNOSTIC AND USAGE INFORMATION instead.
In the interest of privacy, I suggest that, before posting, you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if it’s present (it may not be.)
Please don’t post other kinds of diagnostic report—they're very long and rarely helpful.

Mac Mini extremely unresponsive, pinwheel of death all the time, fails reboot.

I got my mac mini 2011 the MC816LL/A model in February and don't give it much usage so I was surprised when it started behaving erratically and and giving me the pinwheel of death all the time, the issues started all of a sudden a couple of months ago. Even when I force reset the computer fails and then i have to turn it off completely and wait more than 15 mins to be able to use it again, totally ridiculous... I've read all the threads about the issue and they mention OSX lion being sluggish and also to reset PRAM as last resort after I've tried everything under the sun(uninstalling buggy software, repairing disk permissions, general maintenance... etc) I know there has to be something wrong on the software side because I still own an old PowerBook g4 that i got back in 04' and it has never given me any issues so I'm extremely fed up with this issue since this computer is supposed to be better. Any suggestions??

First, back up all data immediately, as your boot drive may be failing.
If you have more than ten or so files or folders on your Desktop, move them, temporarily at least, somewhere else in your home folder.
If iCloud is enabled, disable it.
Disconnect all wired peripherals except keyboard, mouse, and monitor, if applicable. Launch the usual set of applications you use when you notice the problem.
Step 1
Launch the Activity Monitor 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.
☞ If you’re running Mac OS X 10.7 or later, open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Activity Monitor in the page that opens.
Select the CPU tab.
Select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected.
Click the heading of the % CPU column in the process table to sort the entries by CPU usage. You may have to click it twice to get the highest value at the top. What is it, and what is the process? Also post the values for % User, % System, and % Idle at the bottom of the window.
Select the System Memory tab. What values are shown in the bottom part of the window for Page outs and Swap used?
Step 2
You must be logged in as an administrator to carry out this step.
Launch the Console application in the same way as above. Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left.
Post the 50 or so most recent messages in the log — the text, please, not a screenshot.
Important: Some personal information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Edit it out before posting.

Mail and never ending spinning pinwheel of death! Help!

I'm running 10.5.6 on my 24'' aluminum/glass iMac, and when I open mail, I instantly get a spinning pinwheel of death that doesn't go away. I then have to force quit Mail, and if I open it again, the same thing happens.
This definitely *****, how would I go about re-installing mail? Is that the solution?

You don't need to reinstall mail, however, I do thing you need to reset it.
This is how you do it:
Quit mail (force quit it if necessary)
Delete the following files:
~\library\Preferences\com.apple.mail.plist
~\library\Preferences\com.apple.mail.RSS.plist
Move the folder Mail from ~\Library to your Desktop
Launch mail. It will ask you to configure a new account, if it doesn't click on the Mail menu\Preferences\Accounts\(+) to add a new account and follow the on screen instructions to add an account. if you don't know how to add an account follow this tutorial:
http://grumpynet.ath.cx/tutorials/configuremailforleopard/configuremail.php
If you need help finding the settings for your ISP check out this link or call your ISP:
http://grumpynet.ath.cx/Articles/Mailservers/mailservers1.php
After doing this you should have your mail working normally again.
NOTE: if you have folders created in your computer you can recover them by copying the Mail folder you moved to the desktop earlier into ~\Library and replace what's there. The folder ~\Library\Mail contains all your email messages and attachments, you can browse it and take a look at its structure if you want, is actually pretty cool and can help you understand how you can recover messages in the future or from another computer
NOTE 2: the term ~\ means your Home Folder (the folder with the icon of a house and your user name under Places in Finder)
I hope this help you fix your problem. Please post back to let us know if this fixed your problem or if you need more help

I can't adjust any settings in iPhoto preferences because it always freezes and i get the spinning pinwheel of death! HELP!!!

i can't adjust any settings in iPhoto preferences because it always freezes and i get the spinning pinwheel of death! HELP!!!

Try the following:
1 - delete the iPhoto preference file, com.apple.iPhoto.plist, that resides in your
User/Home/Library/ Preferences folder.
2 - delete the contents the following folder: User/Library/Containers/com.apple.iPhoto
3 - reboot, launch iPhoto and try again.
NOTE: For Mavericks and Yosemite, go to your Home folder and use the View ➙ Show View Options menu to bring the this window:
where you can check the Show Library Folder checkbox.

Directory Utility Won't Launch, Pinwheel of Death...

So, just today, two Leopard Macs (10.5.7) on my network lost connection to our Active Directory. A switch was rebooted, and the Macs lost DNS for only a couple minutes. When I went to reboot them to get the authentication back, as I've done many times in the past, neither of them could see the directory server. None of the AD accounts could log in. So I went to log in as a local admin, and went to launch Directory Utility to unbind and rebind, and I just get the pinwheel of death. This is happening on a G5 tower and an Intel iMac. Both were 10.5.7, and I was hoping an OS update might fix it, so I upgraded them to 10.5.8 and that didn't help.
Just out of curiosity, I tried to run DU on another Mac Laptop that has never been part of any directory, and it is doing the same thing. The G5 is a pretty fresh OS install with no third party software installed other than VLC. So I'm not really sure what's going on.
I tried using dsconfigad from the command line to Unbind the machines from the directory, and it just hangs after it asks for the network password... I'm confused, and unable to log into my macs...

Post to the Server Products forums where those mavens hang out.

13 in mackbook pro- system pref..rainbow pinwheel of 'death'. black screen

every time I even attempt System Preferences, I get the little pinwheel of 'death', I am up to date on all my stuff so I am confused on what it could possibly be? I had saved an image off the internet, went to upload it to FaceBook and then as I went to Syst Pref to change something with my wireless setting, this is what had popped up. (last night) and today, my whole entire screen turned black while online doing some homework. Does anyone have any clue what this could be?

in my case, the performance update seems to have taken care of the problem - it hasn't recurred since applying the patch.
however, corsair has stopped shipment on their x256 drives, because they apparently do have some kind of firmware problem which is causing some disks to disappear permanently from the sata bus. i think that all these 256GB MLC drives are based on the indilix chip, and its likely that they all run the same firmware. so your crucial disk may have the same problem.
i don't know if crucial has a support forum, but it's worth looking to see if there is one. corsair is being very aggressive in doing RMAs and even giving you back a samsung-based SSD if you ask nicely. they seem to be taking this very seriously.
have you tried the performance update? in my experience it's worth a try.

Safari 5.1 and Lion pinwheel of death

After the install of Lion my Safari 5.1 is running very slow. It either crashes or I get the pinwheel of death for around a minute or so. You can't reinstall Safari 5.1 because the download site is set up for Snow Leopard. Any sugestions? I've cleared my cache. I'm on a 2007 iMac intel duo core.

I've been having the SPOD as well, since the upgrade to Lion. It only seems to be in Safari. It will spin for around 30 seconds, then work fine. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to when it happens, it happens on low graphics pages as well as those with embeded animations etc...

When I shut down last night all was fine today spinning pinwheels of death. Is there a fix?

When I shut down last night Mac was working fine. Today Spinning Pinwheels od Death when I open any app. Any fix?

PowerMac do not run 10.6, and are not Intel Xeon....
Repair
Boot from another hard drive or 10.6 DVD or fsck
Or restore from last backup
Clone your system to another drive
I advise Disk Utility AND Disk Warrior as a start along with multiple backup sets.

PSE9 on iMac shows pinwheel of death for 10 to 15 seconds when mousing!

Help! My PSE9 on my iMac (10.8.3) has become nearly completely unresponsive. When I mouse over any menu or tool, I get a 10 to 15 second pinwheel of death. I can't select tools from the toolbar. I think this all started when I attempted to update the Inspiration Browser (that ended in failure). I have tried removing the program and reinstalling, but that hasn't helped. I'm relatively new to the Mac world, so I'm not sure whether I removed the program properly.
I trusted that this Adobe software would be a good program for my photo editing needs, but now it's useless. How can I resolve this issue?
I don't know if it makes a difference, but I bought Photoshop Elements & Premier Elements as a boxed set.
Any suggestions?

I would try repairing and optimizing your catalog while you're in there (if you use the organizer), but that won't affect the editor's performance.
To repair permissions, go to applications>utilites>disk utility and click your computer in the list on the left side of the window, then click Repair Permissions. This can take quite a while, so don't fret, and don't get upset about all the messages you'll see passing by in the window while it's working (SUID has been changed and will not be repaired, for example). Those don't matter. The only thing that matters is if you see Repair Failed in red at the end of the process.

Pinwheel of death

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