Places Spinning Beach Ball

I am unable to assign a location to a picture. Places have been enabled in the preferences. When I select a picture and open the Info column, I start typing the name of a location (for example, the Bus Stop bar on Olive Way in Seattle), the spinning beach ball appears and never goes away after typing the first three letters. The "Google Results" are "Searching" but even after an hour, I must force-quit iPhoto.
This happens after rebuilding my iPhoto database or creating a new one and importing even one picture. I have updated to iPhoto 9.1. I am currently re-eavaluting iLife '11 on my computer at work, since my upgrade at home was unsuccessful. I thought perhaps it was the proxy servers at work, but the same thing happens if I use the Wi-Fi connected to a DSL we have for testing. I'm able to assign locations on my personal MacBook using iPhoto '08 and the same wireless network.
-Doug

Actually, there was no iPhoto preference file before the install. I re-imaged my Mac at work to start from scratch. iLife '08 (except for iDVD and Garage Band) was part of the original image of software, I installed all of iLife '11 and imported the 272 pictures that were currently on my SD card in my camera. Attempt to assign a place and all I get is a spinning beach ball. I can see the default places in the search column (Bubnovka, Bubnovo, Bubnovskyaya, Slobodka...) after typing "B" and "u" but after I type the "s" the list goes away and I get stuck with the spinning beach ball. I've repaired permissions, taken a picture with the built-in iSight and put that into iPhoto and all I get to type is three letters and it's frozen forever. The same thing happens no matter what I type into the search field. I get to type three letters and it's frozen. Have now repaired permissions and restarted and the issue remains.
-Doug

Similar Messages

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.
Any thoughts? What do I need to do to resolve the issue?
Thanks

Start with http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/sbbod.html

Spinning "Beach Ball" in Finder

I have a 2007 MacBook Pro running OS10.9.5. I recently noticed that whenever I double-click on an icon in the Finder the "spinning beach ball" occurs for about 20 seconds. Afterwards, the page will then load. This problem does not occur in any app; only the Finder.
I wold appreciate any thoughts as to why this issue occurred all of a sudden. Thank you kindly.

1. This procedure is a diagnostic test. It changes nothing, for better or worse, and therefore will not, in itself, solve the problem. But with the aid of the test results, the solution may take a few minutes, instead of hours or days.
Don't be put off by the complexity of these instructions. The process is much less complicated than the description. You do harder tasks with the computer all the time.
2. If you don't already have a current backup, back up all data before doing anything else. The backup is necessary on general principle, not because of anything in the test procedure. Backup is always a must, and when you're having any kind of trouble with the computer, you may be at higher than usual risk of losing data, whether you follow these instructions or not.
There are ways to back up a computer that isn't fully functional. Ask if you need guidance.
3. Below are instructions to run a UNIX shell script, a type of program. As I wrote above, it changes nothing. It doesn't send or receive any data on the network. All it does is to generate a human-readable report on the state of the computer. That report goes nowhere unless you choose to share it. If you prefer, you can act on it yourself without disclosing the contents to me or anyone else.
You should be wondering whether you can believe me, and whether it's safe to run a program at the behest of a stranger. In general, no, it's not safe and I don't encourage it.
In this case, however, there are a couple of ways for you to decide whether the program is safe without having to trust me. First, you can read it. Unlike an application that you download and click to run, it's transparent, so anyone with the necessary skill can verify what it does.
You may not be able to understand the script yourself. But variations of the script have been posted on this website thousands of times over a period of years. The site is hosted by Apple, which does not allow it to be used to distribute harmful software. Any one of the millions of registered users could have read the script and raised the alarm if it was harmful. Then I would not be here now and you would not be reading this message.
Nevertheless, if you can't satisfy yourself that these instructions are safe, don't follow them. Ask for other options.
4. Here's a summary of what you need to do, if you choose to proceed:
☞ Copy a line of text in this window to the Clipboard.
☞ Paste into the window of another application.
☞ Wait for the test to run. It usually takes a few minutes.
☞ Paste the results, which will have been copied automatically, back into a reply on this page.
The sequence is: copy, paste, wait, paste again. You don't need to copy a second time. Details follow.
5. You may have started the computer in "safe" mode. Preferably, these steps should be taken in “normal” mode, under the conditions in which the problem is reproduced. If the system is now in safe mode and works well enough in normal mode to run the test, restart as usual. If you can only test in safe mode, do that.
6. If you have more than one user, and the one affected by the problem is not an administrator, then please run the test twice: once while logged in as the affected user, and once as an administrator. The results may be different. The user that is created automatically on a new computer when you start it for the first time is an administrator. If you can't log in as an administrator, test as the affected user. Most personal Macs have only one user, and in that case this section doesn’t apply. Don't log in as root.
7. The script is a single long line, all of which must be selected. You can accomplish this easily by triple-clicking anywhere in the line. The whole line will highlight, though you may not see all of it in the browser window, and you can then copy it. If you try to select the line by dragging across the part you can see, you won't get all of it.
Triple-click anywhere in the line of text below on this page to select it:
PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/libexec;clear;cd;p=(Software Hardware Memory Diagnostics Power FireWire Thunderbolt USB Fonts SerialATA 4 1000 25 5120 KiB/s 1024 85 \\b%% 20480 1 MB/s 25000 ports ' com.clark.\* \*dropbox \*GoogleDr\* \*k.AutoCAD\* \*k.Maya\* vidinst\* ' DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES\ DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH -86 "` route -n get default|awk '/e:/{print $2}' `" 25 N\\/A down up 102400 25600 recvfrom sendto CFBundleIdentifier 25 25 25 1000 MB com.apple.AirPortBaseStationAgent 464843899 51 5120 files );N5=${#p[@]};p[N5]=` networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder|awk ' NR>1 { sub(/^$[0-9]+$ /,"");n=$0;getline;} $NF=="'${p[26]}')" { sub(/.$/,"",$NF);print n;exit;} ' `;f=('\n%s: %s\n' '\n%s\n\n%s\n' '\nRAM details\n%s\n' %s\ %s '%s\n-\t%s\n' );S0() { echo ' { q=$NF+0;$NF="";u=$(NF-1);$(NF-1)="";gsub(/^ +| +$/,"");if(q>='${p[$1]}') printf("%s (UID %s) is using %s '${p[$2]}'",$0,u,q);} ';};s=(' /^ *$|CSConfigDot/d;s/^ */ /;s/[-0-9A-Fa-f]{22,}/UUID/g;s/(ochat)\.[^.]+(\..+)/\1\2/;/Shared/!s/\/Users\/[^/]+/~/g ' ' s/^ +//;/de: S|[nst]:/p;' ' {sub(/^ +/,"")};/er:/;/y:/&&$2<'${p[10]} ' 1s/://;3,6d;/[my].+:/d;s/^ {4}//;H;${ g;s/\n$//;/s: [^EO]|x([^08]|02[^F]|8[^0])/p;} ' ' 5h;6{ H;g;/P/!p;} ' ' ($1~/^Cy/&&$3>'${p[11]}')||($1~/^Cond/&&$2!~/^N/) ' ' /:$/{ N;/:.+:/d;s/ *://;b0'$'\n'' };/^ *(V.+ [0N]|Man).+ /{ s/ 0x.... //;s/[()]//g;s/(.+: )(.+)/ (\2)/;H;};$b0'$'\n'' d;:0'$'\n'' x;s/\n\n//;/Apple[ ,]|Genesy|Intel|SMSC/d;s/\n.*//;/\)$/p;' ' s/^.*C/C/;H;${ g;/No th|pms/!p;} ' '/= [^GO]/p' '{$1=""};1' ' /Of/!{ s/^.+is |\.//g;p;} ' ' $0&&!/ / { n++;print;} END { if(n<200) print "com.apple.";} ' ' $3~/[0-9]:[0-9]{2}$/ { gsub(/:[0-9:a-f]{14}/,"");} { print|"tail -n'${p[12]}'";} ' ' NR==2&&$4<='${p[13]}' { print $4;} ' ' END { $2/=256;if($2>='${p[15]}') print int($2) } ' ' NR!=13{next};{sub(/[+-]$/,"",$NF)};'"`S0 21 22`" 'NR!=2{next}'"`S0 37 17`" ' NR!=5||$8!~/[RW]/{next};{ $(NF-1)=$1;$NF=int($NF/10000000);for(i=1;i<=3;i++){$i="";$(NF-1-i)="";};};'"`S0 19 20`" 's:^:/:p' '/\.kext\/(Contents\/)?Info\.plist$/p' 's/^.{52}(.+) <.+/\1/p' ' /Launch[AD].+\.plist$/ { n++;print;} END { print "'${p[41]}'";if(n<200) print "/System/";} ' '/\.xpc\/(Contents\/)?Info\.plist$/p' ' NR>1&&!/0x|\.[0-9]+$|com\.apple\.launchctl\.(Aqua|Background|System)$|'${p[41]}'/ { print $3;} ' ' /\.(framew|lproj)|\):/d;/plist:|:.+(Mach|scrip)/s/:[^:]+//p ' '/^root$/p' ' !/\/Contents\/.+\/Contents|Applic|Autom|Frameworks/&&/Lib.+\/Info.plist$/ { n++;print;} END { if(n<1100) print "/System/";} ' '/^\/usr\/lib\/.+dylib$/p' ' /Temp|emac/{next};/(etc|Preferences|Launch[AD].+)\// { sub(".(/private)?","");n++;print;} END { print "'${p[41]}'.plist\t'${p[42]}'";if(n<500) print "Launch";} ' ' /\/(Contents\/.+\/Contents|Frameworks)\/|\.wdgt\/.+\.([bw]|plu)/d;p;' 's/\/(Contents\/)?Info.plist$//;p' ' { gsub("^| |\n","\\|\\|kMDItem'${p[35]}'=");sub("^...."," ") };1 ' p '{print $3"\t"$1}' 's/\'$'\t''.+//p' 's/1/On/p' '/Prox.+: [^0]/p' '$2>'${p[43]}'{$2=$2-1;print}' ' BEGIN { i="'${p[26]}'";M1='${p[16]}';M2='${p[18]}';M3='${p[31]}';M4='${p[32]}';} !/^A/{next};/%/ { getline;if($5<M1) a="user "$2"%, system "$4"%";} /disk0/&&$4>M2 { b=$3" ops/s, "$4" blocks/s";} $2==i { if(c) { d=$3+$4+$5+$6;next;};if($4>M3||$6>M4) c=int($4/1024)" in, "int($6/1024)" out";} END { if(a) print "CPU: "a;if(b) print "I/O: "b;if(c) print "Net: "c" (KiB/s)";if(d) print "Net errors: "d" packets/s";} ' ' /r\[0\] /&&$NF!~/^1(0|72\.(1[6-9]|2[0-9]|3[0-1])|92\.168)\./ { print $NF;exit;} ' ' !/^T/ { printf "(static)";exit;} ' '/apsd|BKAg|OpenD/!s/:.+//p' ' (/k:/&&$3!~/(255\.){3}0/ )||(/v6:/&&$2!~/A/ ) ' ' $1~"lR"&&$2<='${p[25]}';$1~"li"&&$3!~"wpa2";' ' BEGIN { FS=":";p="uniq -c|sed -E '"'s/ +\$[0-9]+\$\$.+\$/\\\2 x\\\1/;s/x1$//'"'";} { n=split($3,a,".");sub(/_2[01].+/,"",$3);print $2" "$3" "a[n]$1|p;b=b$1;} END { close(p);if(b) print("\n\t* Code injection");} ' ' NR!=4{next} {$NF/=10240} '"`S0 27 14`" ' END { if($3~/[0-9]/)print$3;} ' ' BEGIN { L='${p[36]}';} !/^[[:space:]]*(#.*)?$/ { l++;if(l<=L) f=f"\n "$0;} END { F=FILENAME;if(!F) exit;if(!f) f="\n [N/A]";"file -b "F|getline T;if(T!~/^(AS.+ (En.+ )?text$|(Bo|PO).+ sh.+ text ex)/) F=F" ("T")";printf("\nContents of %s\n%s\n",F,f);if(l>L) printf("\n ...and %s more line(s)\n",l-L);} ' ' s/^ ?n...://p;s/^ ?p...:/-'$'\t''/p;' 's/0/Off/p' ' END{print NR} ' ' /id: N|te: Y/{i++} END{print i} ' ' / / { print "'"${p[28]}"'";exit;};1;' '/ en/!s/\.//p' ' NR!=13{next};{sub(/[+-M]$/,"",$NF)};'"`S0 39 40`" ' $10~/\(L/&&$9!~"localhost" { sub(/.+:/,"",$9);print $1": "$9;} ' '/^ +r/s/.+"(.+)".+/\1/p' 's/(.+\.wdgt)\/(Contents\/)?Info\.plist$/\1/p' 's/^.+\/(.+)\.wdgt$/\1/p' ' /l: /{ /DVD/d;s/.+: //;b0'$'\n'' };/s: /{ /V/d;s/^ */- /;H;};$b0'$'\n'' d;:0'$'\n'' x;/APPLE [^:]+$/d;p;' ' /^find: /d;p;' "`S0 44 45`" ' BEGIN{FS="= "} /Path/{print $2} ' );c1=(system_profiler pmset\ -g nvram fdesetup find syslog df vm_stat sar ps sudo\ crontab sudo\ iotop top pkgutil 'PlistBuddy 2>&1 -c "Print' whoami cksum kextstat launchctl sudo\ launchctl crontab 'sudo defaults read' stat lsbom mdfind ' for i in ${p[24]};do ${c1[18]} ${c2[27]} $i;done;' defaults\ read scutil sudo\ dtrace sudo\ profiles sed\ -En awk /S*/*/P*/*/*/C*/*/airport networksetup mdutil sudo\ lsof test osascript\ -e );c2=(com.apple.loginwindow\ LoginHook '" /L*/P*/loginw*' "'tell app \"System Events\" to get properties of login items'|tr , \\\n" 'L*/Ca*/com.ap*.Saf*/E*/* -d 1 -name In*t -exec '"${c1[14]}"' :CFBundleDisplayName" {} \;|sort|uniq' '~ $TMPDIR.. $ -flags +sappnd,schg,uappnd,uchg -o ! -user $UID -o ! -perm -600 $' '.??* -path .Trash -prune -o -type d -name *.app -print -prune' :${p[35]}\" :Label\" '{/,}L*/{Con,Pref}* -type f ! -size 0 -name *.plist -exec plutil -s {} \;' "-f'%N: %l' Desktop L*/Keyc*" therm sysload boot-args status " -F '\$Time \$Message' -k Sender kernel -k Message Req 'bad |Beac|caug|dead[^bl]|FAIL|fail|GPU |hfs: Ru|inval|jnl:|last value [1-9]|n Cause: -|NVDA$|pagin|proc: t|Roamed|rror|ssert|Thrott|tim(ed? ?|ing )o|WARN' -k Message Rne 'Goog|ksadm|SMC:| VALI|xpma' -o -k Sender fseventsd -k Message Req 'SL' " '-du -n DEV -n EDEV 1 10' 'acrx -o comm,ruid,%cpu' '-t1 10 1' '-f -pfc /var/db/r*/com.apple.*.{BS,Bas,Es,J,OSXU,Rem,up}*.bom' '{/,}L*/Lo*/Diag* -type f -regex .\*[cgh] ! -name *ag \( -exec grep -lq "^Thread c" {} \; -exec printf \* \; -o -true $ -execdir stat -f:%Sc:%N -t%F {} \;|sort -t: -k2 |tail -n'${p[38]} '-L {/{S*/,},}L*/Lau* -type f' '-L /{S*/,}L*/StartupItems -type f -exec file {} +' '-L /S*/L*/{C*/Sec*A,E}* {/,}L*/{A*d,Ca*/*/Ex,Co{mpon,reM},Ex,Inter,iTu*/*P,Keyb,Mail/B,Pr*P,Qu*T,Scripti,Sec,Servi,Spo,Widg}* -path \\*s/Resources -prune -o -type f -name Info.plist' '/usr/lib -type f -name *.dylib' `awk "${s[31]}"<<<${p[23]}` "/e*/{auto,{cron,fs}tab,hosts,{[lp],sy}*.conf,pam.d/*,ssh{,d}_config,*.local} {,/usr/local}/etc/periodic/*/* /L*/P*{,/*}/com.a*.{Bo,sec*.ap}*t /S*/L*/Lau*/*t .launchd.conf" list getenv /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf\ globalstate --proxy '-n get default' -I --dns -getdnsservers\ "${p[N5]}" -getinfo\ "${p[N5]}" -P -m\ / '' -n1 '-R -l1 -n1 -o prt -stats command,uid,prt' '--regexp --only-files --files com.apple.pkg.*|sort|uniq' -kl -l -s\ / '-R -l1 -n1 -o mem -stats command,uid,mem' '+c0 -i4TCP:0-1023' com.apple.dashboard\ layer-gadgets '-d /L*/Mana*/$USER&&echo On' '-app Safari WebKitDNSPrefetchingEnabled' "+c0 -l|awk '{print(\$1,\$3)}'|sort|uniq -c|sort -n|tail -1|awk '{print(\$2,\$3,\$1)}'" '/S*/*/Ca*/*xpc* >&- ||echo No' );N1=${#c2[@]};for j in {0..9};do c2[N1+j]=SP${p[j]}DataType;done;N2=${#c2[@]};for j in 0 1;do c2[N2+j]="-n ' syscall::'${p[33+j]}':return { @out[execname,uid]=sum(arg0) } tick-10sec { trunc(@out,1);exit(0);} '";done;l=(Restricted\ files Hidden\ apps 'Elapsed time (s)' POST Battery Safari\ extensions Bad\ plists 'High file counts' User Heat System\ load boot\ args FileVault Diagnostic\ reports Log 'Free space (MiB)' 'Swap (MiB)' Activity 'CPU per process' Login\ hook 'I/O per process' Mach\ ports kexts Daemons Agents launchd Startup\ items Admin\ access Root\ access Bundles dylibs Apps Font\ issues Inserted\ dylibs Firewall Proxies DNS TCP/IP Wi-Fi Profiles Root\ crontab User\ crontab 'Global login items' 'User login items' Spotlight Memory Listeners Widgets Parental\ Controls Prefetching SATA Descriptors XPC\ cache );N3=${#l[@]};for i in 0 1 2;do l[N3+i]=${p[5+i]};done;N4=${#l[@]};for j in 0 1;do l[N4+j]="Current ${p[29+j]}stream data";done;A0() { id -G|grep -qw 80;v[1]=$?;((v[1]==0))&&sudo true;v[2]=$?;v[3]=`date +%s`;clear >&-;date '+Start time: %T %D%n';};for i in 0 1;do eval ' A'$((1+i))'() { v=` eval "${c1[$1]} ${c2[$2]}"|'${c1[30+i]}' "${s[$3]}" `;[[ "$v" ]];};A'$((3+i))'() { v=` while read i;do [[ "$i" ]]&&eval "${c1[$1]} ${c2[$2]}" \"$i\"|'${c1[30+i]}' "${s[$3]}";done<<<"${v[$4]}" `;[[ "$v" ]];};A'$((5+i))'() { v=` while read i;do '${c1[30+i]}' "${s[$1]}" "$i";done<<<"${v[$2]}" `;[[ "$v" ]];};';done;A7(){ v=$((`date +%s`-v[3]));};B2(){ v[$1]="$v";};for i in 0 1;do eval ' B'$i'() { v=;((v['$((i+1))']==0))||{ v=No;false;};};B'$((3+i))'() { v[$2]=`'${c1[30+i]}' "${s[$3]}"<<<"${v[$1]}"`;} ';done;B5(){ v[$1]="${v[$1]}"$'\n'"${v[$2]}";};B6() { v=` paste -d: <(printf "${v[$1]}") <(printf "${v[$2]}")|awk -F: ' {printf("'"${f[$3]}"'",$1,$2)} ' `;};B7(){ v=`grep -Fv "${v[$1]}"<<<"$v"`;};C0(){ [[ "$v" ]]&&echo "$v";};C1() { [[ "$v" ]]&&printf "${f[$1]}" "${l[$2]}" "$v";};C2() { v=`echo $v`;[[ "$v" != 0 ]]&&C1 0 $1;};C3() { v=`sed -E "$s"<<<"$v"`&&C1 1 $1;};for i in 1 2;do for j in 0 2 3;do eval D$i$j'(){ A'$i' $1 $2 $3; C'$j' $4;};';done;done;{ A0;D20 0 $((N1+1)) 2;D10 0 $N1 1;B0;C2 27;B0&&! B1&&C2 28;D12 15 37 25 8;A1 0 $((N1+2)) 3;C0;D13 0 $((N1+3)) 4 3;D23 0 $((N1+4)) 5 4;D13 0 $((N1+9)) 59 50;for i in 0 1 2;do D13 0 $((N1+5+i)) 6 $((N3+i));done;D13 1 10 7 9;D13 1 11 8 10;D22 2 12 9 11;D12 3 13 10 12;D23 4 19 44 13;D23 5 14 12 14;D22 6 36 13 15;D22 7 37 14 16;D23 8 15 38 17;D22 9 16 16 18;B1&&{ D22 35 49 61 51;D22 11 17 17 20;for i in 0 1;do D22 28 $((N2+i)) 45 $((N4+i));done;};D22 12 44 54 45;D22 12 39 15 21;A1 13 40 18;B2 4;B3 4 0 19;A3 14 6 32 0;B4 0 5 11;A1 17 41 20;B7 5;C3 22;B4 4 6 21;A3 14 7 32 6;B4 0 7 11;B3 4 0 22;A3 14 6 32 0;B4 0 8 11;B5 7 8;B1&&{ A2 19 26 23;B7 7;C3 23;};A2 18 26 23;B7 7;C3 24;A2 4 20 21;B7 6;B2 9;A4 14 7 52 9;B2 10;B6 9 10 4;C3 25;D13 4 21 24 26;B4 4 12 26;B3 4 13 27;A1 4 22 29;B7 12;B2 14;A4 14 6 52 14;B2 15;B6 14 15 4;B3 0 0 30;C3 29;A1 4 23 27;B7 13;C3 30;D13 24 24 32 31;D13 25 37 32 33;A2 23 18 28;B2 16;A2 16 25 33;B7 16;B3 0 0 34;B2 21;A6 47 21&&C0;B1&&{ D13 21 0 32 19;D13 10 42 32 40;D22 29 35 46 39;};D23 14 1 62 42;D12 34 43 53 44;D12 22 50 32 52;D22 0 $((N1+8)) 51 32;D13 4 8 41 6;D12 26 28 35 34;D13 27 29 36 35;A2 27 32 39&&{ B2 19;A2 33 33 40;B2 20;B6 19 20 3;};C2 36;D23 33 34 42 37;B1&&D23 35 45 55 46;D23 32 31 43 38;D12 36 47 32 48;D13 20 42 32 41;D13 37 2 48 43;D13 4 5 32 1;D13 4 3 60 5;D12 26 48 49 49;B3 4 22 57;A1 26 46 56;B7 22;B3 0 0 58;C3 47;D22 4 4 50 0;D23 22 9 37 7;A7;C2 2;} 2>/dev/null|pbcopy;exit 2>&-
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
8. Launch the built-in 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.
Click anywhere in the Terminal window and paste by pressing command-V. The text you pasted should vanish immediately. If it doesn't, press the return key.
9. If you see an error message in the Terminal window such as "Syntax error" or "Event not found," enter
exec bash
and press return. Then paste the script again.
10. If you're logged in as an administrator, you'll be prompted for your login password. Nothing will be displayed when you type it. You will not see the usual dots in place of typed characters. Make sure caps lock is off. Type carefully and then press return. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you make three failed attempts to enter the password, the test will run anyway, but it will produce less information. In most cases, the difference is not important. If you don't know the password, or if you prefer not to enter it, press the key combination control-C or just press return three times at the password prompt. Again, the script will still run.
If you're not logged in as an administrator, you won't be prompted for a password. The test will still run. It just won't do anything that requires administrator privileges.
11. The test may take a few minutes to run, depending on how many files you have and the speed of the computer. A computer that's abnormally slow may take longer to run the test. While it's running, there will be nothing in the Terminal window and no indication of progress. Wait for the line
[Process completed]
to appear. If you don't see it within half an hour or so, the test probably won't complete in a reasonable time. In that case, close the Terminal window and report what happened. No harm will be done.
12. When the test is complete, quit Terminal. The results will have been copied to the Clipboard automatically. They are not shown in the Terminal window. Please don't copy anything from there. All you have to do is start a reply to this comment and then paste by pressing command-V again.
At the top of the results, there will be a line that begins with the words "Start time." If you don't see that, but instead see a mass of gibberish, you didn't wait for the "Process completed" message to appear in the Terminal window. Please wait for it and try again.
If any private information, such as your name or email address, appears in the results, anonymize it before posting. Usually that won't be necessary.
13. When you post the results, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "You are not authorized to post." That's a bug in the forum software. Please post the test results on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.
14. This is a public forum, and others may give you advice based on the results of the test. They speak only for themselves, and I don't necessarily agree with them.
Copyright © 2014 by Linc Davis. As the sole author of this work, I reserve all rights to it except as provided in the Use Agreement for the Apple Support Communities website ("ASC"). Readers of ASC may copy it for their own personal use. Neither the whole nor any part may be redistributed.

Spinning beach ball at login screen after upgrading to 10.4.8

Ok, I so used software update to install the 10.4.8 update (I know, big mistake, should have used combo update, etc.), and upon restart can't get past the login screen. After several seconds, the spinning beach ball appears and that's it. Been like that for hours.
Booted into single user mode and ran fsck, says that the volume is fine. diskutil stalls out in single user mode (can't place my hands on the install CD, otherwise I'd use diskutil fron that).
So, ideas?

I had this happen on my wife's iBook G4.. Here's what I did..
Remove the battery.. Unplug the power. Let it sit for a few seconds. (30 to be safe)..
Then plug it all back in
Turn it on and press APPLE-OPTION-P-R immediately after pressing the power button and hold it in for a LONG time.. even after you hear the chime.. keep holding it in for FOUR CHIMES and FOUR initialiations of the CD/DVD drive.
Then let go and let it boot.. you will then see the Apple Grey screen and it should boot normally.. Once it boots, repair permissions immediately.
At least that's what worked on her iBook, exact same problem.
Hope this helps.
Greg

Constant Spinning beach ball of death!!! please help!!!

I have a macbook 2.1ghz with OSX 10.5.8 running with 4gb of 667mhz DDR2
Recently I have been getting spinning beach balls of death on a constant biases. They come when I try to open web pages such as google, youtube, espn.com... ANYTHING actually. They come when I try to open applications, they seem to come when I try to do almost anything. I cannot force quit when they come. I have tried waiting for them to go away, sometimes up to an hour and nothing happens. They have come when I try to open utilities to try to figure out what is wrong. They come in safe mode.
I have run disk permissions like someone suggested to you, and that has done nothing.
I made another account for the computer, and that still receives the same amount of beach balls.
I tried updating software. Nothing.
I reinstalled the OS, nothing.
I switched the ram out with the ram that came with the computer, and I still get the beach balls.
I ran Onyx, and it said the drives are fine.
Yesterday out of sheer desperation I reformatted the whole thing. (former PC user) At first it looked ok, but then I began to update software and it locked up. Also, now when I open web pages I get a beach ball that SOMETIMES goes away after 5 minutes. Usually it just spins and spins mocking my existence.
What else can I try? What else can I do? I live in a place that makes it VERY VERY difficult to take to a mac mechanic. (South Korea)
I don't want to have to buy a POS PC netbook. Please advise.

My suggestion won't repair anything but it might be able to tell you if you have a hardware issue....(I am thinking that your hard drive may be about to give up....I have seen almost this exact set of symptoms here before)....try running the (AHT) Apple Hardware Test)...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509
....when you are booted from your install DVD pay attention to see if the SBBOD goes away no matter what the AHT says...problems found or not when running the tests....and run the extended set of tests.....
If the problem goes away while you are not booted from the internal hard drive....I would strongly suspect the hard drive....
You don't mention having run (Repair) disk from Disk Utility....not (Repair) permissions....
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509
...again you will need to boot from your install DVD to run (Repair) disk in Disk Utility...

Spinning beach ball of death on opening mail

I've been using mail since i had my Mac OS X 10.4.6, however, when I updated to 10.4.9, as soon as i open the program, i get the spinning beach ball of death, making me force quit the application. basically, i cannot use my mail application!!!

Quit the Mail.app and using the Finder go to Home > Library > Mail.
Delete the newly created Mail folder.
Move the original Mail folder from the Desktop back to the same location. Copy the original Mail folder and place the copy on the Desktop for backup purposes.
Using the Finder go to Home > Library > Preferences > com.apple.mail.plist. Move the com.apple.mail.plist file to the Desktop.
Note: Moving the com.apple.mail.plist file out of the Preferences folder will require re-entering all email account information when re-launching Mail.
Launch Mail and if successful, decline any prompt provided to import mailboxes. After re-entering all email account information the same as before, the Mail.app should rediscover the existing account named folders and mailboxes at Home > Library > Mail.
If this is successful, you can delete the copy of the Mail folder and the old com.apple.mail.plist file from the Desktop.

Mavericks Screen Capture causes spinning beach ball

Trained by experience never to install a brand new operating system on top of a perfectly functioning one (unless I want to risk many wasting times and losing productivity), to test out the new Mac OS, I installed Mavericks on an external FireWire drive by upgrading a fresh install of Snow Leopard, updated to its maximum version. Nothing else was on the volume, for I had used Disk Utility to securely erase and content and overwrite the volume with zeros.
Immediately after the Mavericks, I looked at the System Profile, taking some screen captures of selected windows. While Mavericks successfully captured the screens, it failed to display them when I selected one and hit the space bar. Instead, mavericks presented a perpetually spinning beach ball that prevented me from doing anything else on the Mac. I was forced to shut down.
Upon restart back into Mavericks, I encountered the same problem. I had to force power off again.
After rebooting into Mountain Lion on my internal hard drive, I ran a complete series of hard drive maintenance utilities involving all the tools I have, including Disk Utility, Drive Genius, Disk Warrior, and Tech Tool Pro. All ran successfully and reported no problems. I then capped things by running iDefrag to eliminate file fragmentation and to optimize the volume. With several hours of labor invested in preparing the external hard disk, downloading Mavericks' installer, running the Mavericks installer, performing all the pertinent maintenance routines I could think of, and finally optimizing the volume, which has no other software on it besides the new Apple operating system, I restarted the Mavericks volume. I then took a fresh screen capture, selected it, pressed the space bar, and I still got that infernal spinning beach ball.
I let it run for at least half an hour as I returned to watching a football game, hoping things would finally get cleared up. They did not. The ball still spun. I could not even get to the Finder to peek into the Force Quit command under the Apple icon. So, as originally condemned, I was compelled to hold down the power button to regain control of my computer, which this new, appropriately named operating system had wrested from me.
Anyone having a similar problem? Anyone aware of a sure-fire solution, other than to avoid relying on this new operating system, which must be my policy until such glitches get fixed?
At least you know now why I consider it unwise to install a brand new OS atop of one that has served you well.

OK, it’s Wednesday now, late afternoon, following a long yesterday, spent exclusively on getting Mavericks installed, a day which continued well into night, approaching the sun rise, until I collapsed. No one can tell me that the Mavericks installation is without errors! Your mileage may differ, if you’re lucky. But if you had to go through what I just did, you’ll long for the days of System 7, when all you had to do was shove a half-dozen floppy disks into a floppy drive to get your Mac up and running without such angst.
SHORT ANSWER:
After many twists and turns that Apple should have foreseen and not inflicted upon customers, I finally managed to get Mavericks installed on my external Firewire hard drive.
I did follow your lead, Baltwo, that the nature of the problem might lay in corrupt preferences files on the primary Account, but, as I attempted a couple of days, I modified your suggestion that I cherry-pick which plist files might be good vs. which might be corrupt, by deleting the whole **** account. A couple of days ago, my intuition told me that doing that was the wiser way to proceed; today I felt compelled to do exactly that, because I had no other choice.
The reasons I had to do that is elaborated upon below.
LONGER EXPLANATION and DETAILS:
As I explained in the message I composed on Tuesday morning, I felt so insecure that I did not obtain a well-functioning operating system that I had decided to start the installation all over from scratch.
It took all day Monday to again use Disk Utility to securely erase the volume and prepare it for the new installation. When I tried to short-cut the process by doing a Quick Erase, the volume refused to accept the installation of Snow Leopard 10.6.3 from the DVD. On top of that, I again encountered difficulties in installing Snow Leopard from the DVD, because the installer just could not close the deal. The gauge runs up to the 99% mark, and it hangs there saying that it is “Moving items into place.” Sure, it is!
I’m a patient guy, so I let the installer do its thing for about four hours while I watched the World Series game. (Yeah, Red Sox!) But by the time the game was over, so was my patience. I had to Force Power Off the Mac and restart it.
Since I have no confidence in an operating system whose installer failed to do its job properly, I felt that I had to do more. Before I did that, though, I did a Google search to find out if my experience was unique. It is not! The forums are full of people who have complained about this very same hanging problem ever since the Snow Leopard DVD was released. Great, I thought. Now what do I do?
I decided to the Apple support site and download the 1.x GB combo updater to Snow Leopard 10.6.8 in the hopes that the upgrade process would cure whatever issues cropped up during the incomplete installation by the DVD. After downloading that combo disk image, installing 10.6.8, restarting the Mac under 10.6.8, and getting all the software updates applicable to that version, a few tests, supplemented by a running a whole barrage of maintenance utilizes to fix permissions, repair the disk, rebuilt the directory, seemed to indicate that I did finally achieve a solid installation of Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and all its trimming.
To save myself any future agony of having to go through this kind of winding road installation again, I used SuperDuper to create a disk image of the entire volume. That disk image is stored on another Firewire volume, ready to burned at some future date onto a BluRay disc for safe-keeping and backup.
With Snow Leopard safely installed on the volume and sporting one user Account, I was ready to use the Mavericks installer package that I had downloaded last Saturday, when I first began this process, to upgrade to Apple’s latest and greatest OS. Unfortunately, the installation process failed in the same way that the Snow Leopard installer failed. The installer just could not get over the hump of closing the deal. Once I got the installer started, I went to bed.
Four hours later, the installer still had not completed its job, again getting to the 99% mark, and just hanging there. Again, I had to Power Off the Mac. Upon restarting with the Option held down, I elected to start up using the built-in Recovery feature.
That seemed to work, but only sort of. I was able to get a Mavericks desktop, but the User account had absolutely no privileges to do a **** thing. It could not open its own Home folder to see what was in it. It could not complete the screen capture process, because I had no permission to save the picture anywhere, like on the Desktop.
In System Preferences, I tried to increase the size of the cursor, but that failed. In Finder preferences, I tried to make the hard drives show up on the desktop, but that failed, too. I ran permissions in Disk Utility; that did no good. Nothing worked! I could not even change anything related to my User account, because I had no permission to do so. Imagine that: my only account was an Administer account to which I had no access. I would not have thought such a thing could be possible.
I was caught in a loop, stranded on a Mobius Strip, walking on the wild side, surfing the waves of a brand new operating system corrupted by its own installation process.
Not a good thing at all.
Since the first installment had also resulted in a bizarre set of user accounts ending up with QuickLooks being declared the winner of a new account the system decided to create for me, I think it is reasonably safe to conclude that there is some kind of a bug, or flaw, in the Apple upgrade / installation procedure that needs some attention by Apple system engineers. None of this kind of stuff I have delineated at some length should be happening to anyone who owns a Mac.
And, Baltwo, even though I had kept uppermost in my mind your suggestion about creating a new account merely to ferret out which preference files might be corrupt and which might be OK, I decided that I did not want to take any chances at all with this extremely messed User account, which had worked fine in Snow Leopard, but had somehow got corrupted during the upgrade. So, as before, I decided to (1) create a brand new Administrator account; (2) log out from the useless User account in which I had no privileges whatsoever; (3) log in with the brand new Adminstrator; and (4) delete that useless User account entirely, completely, and forever.
At first, I was a little hesitant about deleting the first Administrator account that existed in my Users and Groups pane. I did not even know if such a thing could be done. So, I referred to my David Pogue reference books, and I did a Google search for “Delete Home User Mac” to see what others knew about this. Everyone described the standard way to delete an account; no one even mentioned any prohibition about deleting the original User account. So, I went ahead and deleted it, without encountering the slightest problem in doing so. I even followed up with before and after Terminal commands to see if that useless User account was truly gone, and it definitely went poof. Since I lacked permissions to create any documents at all within that former Home folder, getting rid of it was easy. I think that the System was just as glad to trash it as I was.
Hopefully, whatever corruption occurred during the Mavericks installation and upgrade process was restricted to the preference files associated with that messed-up, original Administrator account so that I can begin exploring Mavericks with a perfectly pristine operating system. Before I start tweaking it or adding stuff to it, my next step will be to use SuperDuper to create a disk image of the entire volume, so that, in the future, I will have a clean set of system of file to install on this external Firewire volume, or on any other internal hard drive I choose to install Mavericks later on. A Bluray disc will contain that disc image for safekeeping when it’s time to remove it from the destination volume where it gets created.
As to the tardiness of my reply, it is caused by the exorbitant amount of time—four days!—it took me to trek along this twisting, winding path of installing Mavericks, as well as a glitch in the mismatch of similarly looking User Names associated with similarly looking Apple ID accounts and similarly looking User Names associated with nearly identical Email Addresses that do not convert from one to the other, as, for example, mac.com does to me.com.
As I learned from Apple Staff who responded to my report that I was being locked out of the Apple Discussions community, there are four pieces of information that must match up for each Apple ID account, and my data had slipped out of sync. Now I know why, during Apple’s changeover in the formatting of the Apple Discussions section, I lost all those “points” I had accumulated in helping others, not that I track such things, and I could not find where my previous discussions were.
That’s also why I may be able to award anyone points for helping me in this thread, but I’m dialing in under the “other” Apple ID, not the one I used to create this topic. Close readers will observe the slight difference.
Thanks a lot, Baltwo. You get the credit for pointing me in the right direction.

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?
thanks,
Joe

I think it is definitely related to indexing. I am attaching a screen shot. I think that the application I have open in the menu, which I cannot remember what it is called, nor can I turn it off because my cursor is a beachball, may be part of the problem. While I was trouble shooting, a menu dropped down show that my computer was being indexed. At the same time spotlight opened by itself and it said "Indexing". I tried relaunching the finder, which would not happen. I had to hit the power switch to shut down. Do you recognize what that program in my menu bar is?

Spinning Beach Ball Delay with "Look for Shared Photos" Checked

We installed iLife '06 on our school computers - all 500 of them - this fall. It is version 6.0.4. However, upon launch, there is a long delay of about 2-4 minutes with a spinning beach ball that we've determined takes place because iphoto is looking for shared libraries. We have one shared library on the network at this time, but sometimes teachers turn on sharing, or have in the past.
Last year, we were using iPhoto '04 and had no problems like this at all -shared libraries appeared immediately, just as quickly as shared libraries in itunes still do.
Has anyone experienced this - is there a known issue? Or should I look for a network problem.

Solved this problem myself. It was a dns issue. For some reason, when iphoto looks for shared photo's, it does a reverse lookup on the ip of any machine it finds that has sharing turned on. If there is no reverse lookup zone on your dns server running OS X then it locks up as it repeatedly sends the request. Simply creating a reverse zone for the ip address range of your clients makes the bug go away. Why it needs to do a reverse lookup is beyond me.

Why do I get the spinning beach ball when I try to change from Events to Photos. How do I fix it?

Why do I get the spinning beach ball when I try to change from Events to Photos. How do I fix it?

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 Repair Database. If that doesn't help, then try again, this time using Rebuild Database.
If that fails:
Option 2
Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. (In early versions of Library Manager it's the File -> Rebuild command. In later versions it's under the Library menu.)
This will create an entirely new library. It will then copy (or try to) your photos and all the associated metadata and versions to this new Library, and arrange it as close as it can to what you had in the damaged Library. It does this based on information it finds in the iPhoto sharing mechanism - but that means that things not shared won't be there, so no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your events, 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

IPhoto 9 just sits there with a spinning beach ball of DEATH!

Hello. I upgraded my G5 power pc to OSX 10.5.8. I upgraded to iLife 9 (8.1.2). Since I did this iLife, iDVD & iMovie just sit there with the spinning beach ball of DEATH.
Before my upgrade I had 22 G of hard disk space. I’m now down to 4G of hard drive space. I cannot get into iPhoto to back up any of the pictures. I have run Tech Tool, Onyx, I did a hard wear test from my original Mac disks. Everything passed.
I reinstalled iLife 4 times so far. I have thrown out all the plists. So far nothing is working.
Any help would be wonderful.
Thanks.

That library may have been corrupted by having it on an over full disk.
Hold down the option (or alt) key key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and see if that will open it.
If not then 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

IPhoto does not start - spinning beach ball of death

Hi
When I try to start iPhoto I get the spinning beach ball of death and the whole laptop freezes.
Cannot force quit, have to restart via power button.
I have tried starting iPhoto while holding the Option key - no difference.
Jenn

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

Pressing the motion button after adding audio to a menu=spinning beach ball

just doing a simple iDVD project with some holiday pics, every other menu in the project works fine but when I drag an audio file from iTunes (or select it from the iTunes library in the "media" button) to replace the stock menu audio then press the motion button the spinning beach ball pops up and nothing else happens. If I try to burn the project the process hangs at encoding the audio for this part of the project too.
With the stock theme audio left in place everything is fine, could it be an issue with the format of the song file from iTunes? I have songs on other menus, might be worth noting that these work fine and were purchased from the iTunes store so maybe it is an encoding issue?
My hd space is getting down to 20gb as well if this might be an issue, have tried deleting the plist preference file to to no avila too - any help or suggestions would be gratefully received!

In theory no, as iMovie and iDVD are supposed to be equally happy with AAC and MP3 files. I just find that AIFF works smoothly and does not delay audio encoding in iDVD. I have yet to experience any of the amazing delays in audio encoding, apparently lasting days, that others have reported here.
In iDVD, the 'audio well' look like small speaker icon. When it's occupied the icon identifies the kind of file you have installed.
In Itunes you can identify what format each song is in by clicking on it once and going to Get Info in the File menu. The import setting in Preferences determine what format you are importing in, be it from the Store or your own CDs.

Attempt to delete photo results in 'spinning beach ball'.

We try to delete some photos, and we get a 'spinning beach ball'. All we can do is force quit. The photo we want to delete never is placed in the iPhoto trash. We need to be able to delete photos to gain some hard drive space to produce more albums and videos.
Is this related to the post "Deleting photos doesn't move them to IPhoto Trash "?

Yes, space is very tight on that machine now.
Yes you can move your Library to another drive: Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
Then to rebuild:
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

Someone with two macs pls help with spinning beach ball

Sometimes I download pictures to my MacBook from my camera and then transfer them to my main library on my G5 using photo sharing in iPhoto.
If "look for shared photos" is enabled on the MacBook and "share my photos" is enabled on the G5, I get a long hang and a spinning beach-ball in when I launch iPhoto on the MacBook The hang seems subsequently affects the G5. They both hang for a good 15-30 seconds.
While this is happening the Application Monitor shows a root process called "mds" using 99% of the MacBook CPU. Once the hang is over the mds process goes away. The G5 while still hanging simply shows iPhoto as not responding, no mds process.
I've wiped the MacBook clean, set up new accounts. Nothing seems to fix it. The question is; am I alone? Can someone else go through the steps and get iPhoto to launch with iPhoto already running on another networked mac with photo sharing enabled and not get a spinning beach-ball.
This was also a problem in iPhoto 06'. I was really hoping Apple got my feedback and fixed in 08' Maybe something is wrong with my MacBook.

Hi.
mds is the indexing process, usually run by Spotlight when looking for files, folders, servers, etc.
that's the reason why you get the delay when seeking your images using the sharing function. Your mac is searching for the requested service (your photo sharing "server"...your other mac), and it cannot find it because of the firewall that's built in to the mac. Whether you're doing this via a wireless or an Ethernet connection, you'll need to assure that your firewalls on
both computers are open to allow that type of sharing to take place.
Take a look in your System Prefs, under the Sharing icon. Click on the "Firewall" button and, after authenticating with your password, scroll down and select the option for "iPhoto Bonjour Sharing". You'll need to do this on BOTH machines, as the port is used by each for communication.
That should solve the problem..
Cheers,
Charlie

Places Spinning Beach Ball

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