Spinning Ball & Disk Utility

When getting spinning ball is using disk utility-verify & repair okay ? Plus how often can one use disk utility ?

The esteemed Kappy hath spoken. He is a most senior member of this community and is considered gospel.
When you consider the reasons for BBoD (my favorite term "Beach Ball of Death" from among its many nicknames) are pretty simple when Wikipedia boils it down for us...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_pinwheel
The spinning pinwheel is a pointer in Apple's Mac OS X that indicates an application is not responding to system events.
The icon has also been referred to as the spinning beach ball or, unofficially, the Spinning Beach Ball of Death, the Spinning Pizza of Death (frequently encountered across Mac users forums as The SPOD), the Marble of Doom, or the Pinwheel of Death. The OS X Human Interface Guidelines officially refers to it as the spinning wait cursor, noting also that the developer term cursor is equivalent to the user term pointer.
Each application has an event queue that receives events from the operating system (for example key presses and mouse button clicks). If an application takes longer than 2 seconds to process the events in its event queue (regardless of the exact cause) the operating system displays the wait cursor whenever the cursor hovers over that application's windows.
This is meant to indicate that the application is temporarily unresponsive, a state from which the application may recover, however it may also indicate that the application has entered an unrecoverable state. This prevents the user from closing, resizing, or even minimizing the windows of that application. Users can choose to terminate an unresponsive application... [Force Quit discussion]...
While one application is unresponsive, typically other applications are usable in the meantime.
I get this most often when I use an app that accumulates RAM til it starts using Virtual memory in abundance - like a very long media rich browser session, for instance. If I use up my available RAM and my VM eats into too little available disk space - you see the problem = maybe BBoD !!
ÇÇÇ

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Spinning Beach Ball, Disk Utility

I have had to reinstall my Mac desktop numerous times. Just recently I have been experiencing a problem with teh disk utility window, I keep getting the spinning beach ball and it won't let me reinstall my computer. Please help me

Spinning Beach Ball
Spinning Beach ball (2)
Spinning Beach ball (3)
Spinning Beach ball (4)

Disk Utility hangs ("not responding") when attempting to Repair Disk on Time Capsule sparsebundle. Help.

I am trying to improve the performance of my Time Machine backup and retrievals via my 2nd Gen. Time Capsule from my iMac Core 2 Duo hard drive with SL 10.6.8. The incremental backups generally take 20 - 40 minutes each hour generally with fewer than 100 MB of data being backed up. I have read through numerous threads on these forums about Time Capsule and Time Machine issues as well as the very helpful Pondini site (http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Home.html) and have tried many other suggestions (listed below), but have been unable to attempt a Disk Utility repair disk on the Time Capsule sparsebundle file.
After locating the sparsebundle 'file' in the finder under Shared/TC/Data, I am only sometimes able to drag the sparsebundle into the Disk Utility volumes and disk window. About fifty percent of the time, Disk Utility hangs when attempting to drag in the sparsebundle. If I am able to get it listed and click on "repair disk", then the beach ball begins to spin and nothing happens. This occurs whether or not I first use AirPort Utility to "Disconnect All Users" from the Time Capsule. I have given it over one hour to attempt the repair disk, but nothing happens, i.e., not a single message shows up in the detail window. The beach ball just spins, and Disk Utility shows up in red as "not responding" under the Force Quit menu.
Also note that on my new Macbook Air, Time Machine runs quite quickly via this same Time Capsule from my new Macbook Air using OS X Lion (which seems to indicate that the Time Capsule drive itself is OK).
I would appreciate any tips on getting Disk Utility to run "repair disk" on my sparsebundle, as I seem to have exhausted most other options (see below) for improving Time Capsule performance -- aside of course, from wiping the Time Capsule clean and starting all over.... (which I really don't want to do, and from what I've read, has not helped some people who've tried this anyway).
Many thanks!
Although I would like to focus this thread on the Disk Utility / sparsebundle "Repair Disk" problem, I should mention that I have tried the following other things:
1. Repaired disk permissions on my hard drive
2. Used Disk Utility to run "repair disk" on my hard drive after starting up from a SuperDuper external backup
3. Run DiskWarrior on my hard drive, again, from a separate startup disk
4. Did the "full reset of Time Machine", a la Pondini Troubleshooting #A4
5. Changed my computer and Time Capsule names to simple short names with only alphanumeric characters and no spaces
6. Ensured that my Time Capsule is being accessed only via ethernet
7. Relaunched the finder
8. And finally, attempting to use Disk Utility to repair the sparsebundle - thus the nature of this post

OK, no takers out there, but I answered my own question (sort of).
The answer is that even though Disk Utility shows up as "not responding" under the Force Quit menu and appears to hang, it is actually still working. A bit of patience shows that after about an hour, my Disk Utility was able to show the 1.44 TB Time Machine sparsebundle from Time Capsule in the disk window on the left hand side. Once this appeared, I was able to click on "Repair Disk" (note that prior to doing this, I had to "Disconnect All Users" from my Time Capsule using the Airport Utility program; otherwise you will get a "could not unmount disk" error). Again, the Repair Disk function appeared to hang Disk Utility as it showed up as "not responding" under the Force Quit menu. However, after about 8 hours, Disk Utility did run the entire Repair Disk protocol on the sparsebundle. The results DO NOT show up in the Disk Utility details window - so even if you are patient enough to let it complete, you will not see anything and may think that nothing happened. However, you can find the familiar results of the Repair Disk function by looking on Console - find the "DiskUtility.log" under Files: ˜/Library/Logs.
Unfortunately, I was hoping to find a problem that would have been subsequently repaired which would result in dramatically increased Time Capsule speed, but this was not the case. Disk Utility showed everything to be "OK" and I am stuck with a very slow Time Capsule....
(And of note, my new Macbook Air (OS Lion) Time Machine functions blazingly fast on both backup and retrieval to and from the very same Time Capsule - even though, these are occuring wirelessly via AirPort -- granted the size of this sparsebundle is an order of magnitude smaller at this point, i.e., only 10 GB right now)
Would still be happy to hear of any similar experiences or tips on getting Time Capsule to work more quickly.

My 3 year-old macbook pro is very slow. I have run disk utility and virus scan with no improvement. The "beach ball" will spin for minutes at a time when opening, closing or changing windows. Apple Store looked at it a few months ago with no help.

my 3 year-old macbook pro is very slow. I have run disk utility and virus scan with no improvement. The "beach ball" will spin for minutes at a time when opening, closing or changing windows. Apple Store looked at it a few months ago with no help. What can I do?

Under CPU: 3.5% user; 5% system; 91% idle; 441 threads; 90 processes.
Under System: out of 2GB - 54.7MB free; 530MB wired; 603MB active; 862MB inactive; 1.95GB used.
Is too much of the system memory tied up? If so, what can I do to free some up?

Spinning Beach Ball of death during disk utility

Go to disk utility and verify the startup disk, start the disk verification and the spinng beach ball of death coming up. After a minute the result is that the disk is ok. During the verify processing I see only the spinning ball.
Anyone???

drums77 wrote:
Go to disk utility and verify the startup disk, start the disk verification and the spinng beach ball of death coming up. After a minute the result is that the disk is ok. During the verify processing I see only the spinning ball.
Anyone???
Normal. The verify disk operation on the boot volume can take a while and Disk Utility may not be responding to the OS quickly enough so the mystic spinning lollipop pizza comes up for a while. Somewhere there is an actual disclaimer to that effect. It all comes from not being able to dismount the root volume, which complicates the process.

My Macbook aliminium unibody from late 2008 will not boot. I reach the grey screen with the apple icon and the spinning grey gear. I used disk utility to boot it but it said integrity test failed. I don't know what to do can anyone please help?

My Macbook aliminium unibody from late 2008 will not boot. I reach the grey screen with the apple icon and the spinning grey gear. I used disk utility to boot it but it said integrity test failed. I don't know what to do can anyone please help?

Sounds like you may have a harddrive issue. You are probably going to need to get that changed out and then install the OS X again to get it going.

Running the latest OS Mavericks. 8 gigs of RAM. 150 gigs free space on computer. Problem: since upgrading to Maverick almost all applications are slow to open, and frequently many 'spinning ball' interruptions. Repaired disk permissions - no help.

I'm running the latest OS 10.9.1 Mavericks (late 2009 iMac). 8 gigs of RAM. 150 gigs free space on computer. Since upgrading to Mavericks, apps are slow to open, with frequent "spinning ball" interruptions. Repaired Disk Permissions - no help. Repaired disk - no problems indicated. Did notice in going to Utilities/Console that there are 4000 messages over a 3 day period. Any suggesstions how to correct this sudden slow down, other than psychiatric help?

Yes. Many messages show up when I try to use Office for Mac 08. Here's a sample (and one that repeats over and over again):
2/11/14 1:01:16.577 PM Microsoft Word[1912]: OTAtomicAdd32 is deprecated and will be removed soon. Please stop using it.
Also getting many msgs when I use Chrome.

Can't get rid of spinning circle, ran disk utility, computer running slow

can't get rid of spinning circle, ran disk utility, computer running slow
MAC OS X version 10.6.8

If you are running OS 10.6.8 it has to be Intel.
Serious slowdowns, if not due to a hard drive failing, are caused by unnecessary third-party software. Please answer the following questions:
1) Are you running any anti-virus/internet security applications?
2) Are you running any "cleaning/tune-up/optimizations" applications?
3) Any peer-to-peer or torrent downloading software?
4) Any third-party disk backup software that came bundled with an external hard drive?
5) Any online backup scheme other than iCloud (Carbonite; GoogleDrive; MS One Drive)?

Disk Utility is non-responsive (beach ball). I reinstalled ML, twice. No dice. Any suggestions?

I upgraded to Mountain Lion on two 27" iMacs (Mid-2010) I own. Disk Utility beach balls on me and it is happening on both Macs. I have run Check Disk through the Recovery Partition and everything is checking out ok there and with SMART. I formatted one computer and did a reinstall on the other. Neither one fixed the problem. I am stumped.

I upgraded to Mountain Lion on two 27" iMacs (Mid-2010) I own. Disk Utility beach balls on me and it is happening on both Macs. I have run Check Disk through the Recovery Partition and everything is checking out ok there and with SMART. I formatted one computer and did a reinstall on the other. Neither one fixed the problem. I am stumped.

I want to wipe my HD clean. Command R won't bring up disk utility, it just keeps spinning on the Apple logo. I'm running 10.9.3 on a macbook pro.

I want to wipe my HD clean. Command R won't bring up disk utility, it just keeps spinning on the Apple logo. I'm running 10.9.3 on a macbook pro.

Select the Recovery partition. It should boot to a screen like this:
Select Disk Utility and reformat your boot drive, formatting with a single GUID partition as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". Once the partition is erased go back to Reinstall Mac OS X and install the OS on your newly formatted partition. It may take a while and if you downloaded Mavericks from the Mac App Store (duh!) you may need your Apple ID and password handy.
Installing the OS may take quite some time as it will necessitate downloading the 5GB+ OS file.
Now you'll be able to make a clean installation of everything.
Clinton

Ibook G4 - won't start up, spins, and shuts down... disk utility repair...

ibook G4 - won't start up, spins, and shuts down... disk utility repair quits. says "invalid sibling link" "volume check failed" "1 volume could not be repaired because of an error" "the underlying task reported failure on exit"
any ideas about how to start and/or recover data ??
thanks

Hi chesterday, and a warm welcome to the forums!
You must repair the HD, your best bet is DiskWarrior from Alsoft...
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/
You'll need the CD though.
Unfortunately, Disk Utility can't fix all that much, and the only other Apple Options are erasing the HD, or installing OSX to a second drive, then using Migration Assistant to move stuff over to the new HD.

Wife about to give birth and Disk Utility failing to repair HD.

Good morning. Starting last night I began having serious issues with my 2007 20" 2.4ghz iMac. I hope someone can help before I employ the "nuke" option.
First a little background. My wife is about to give birth to our second child. I have several in-laws in town and my house is a wreck. So, last night I thought it would be a great time to upgrade my iPhone 3G to iOS 4. I am not implying that updating my phone caused the problems with my iMac but they started about 30 seconds after pushing the "Update" button in iTunes.
The phone did update to iOS 4 after about 3 hours of backing up but immediately the iMac started "hanging up" and the spinning beach ball appeared for minutes at a time. late last night after my iPhone was functioning again, I went to bed.
This morning, the iMac was still responding very slowly and I was getting the spinning beach ball for even longer periods of time. So, I rebooted the machine and upon reboot the iMac would get stuck on the grey screen with the Apple logo and a spinning gear.
I tried all of the methods on this support document.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570
It would not boot into Safe Mode.
I reset the NVRAM/PRAM.
I checked the power cables.
I removed all USB and perpherial attachments. (Including even trying to boot without the keyboard or mouse plugged in.)
After booting from the Install DVD and running Disk Utility, Disk Utility was telling me that almost the entire HD is available and that it could not repair the disk. I was receiving "Invalid Node Structure" and "Volume Check Failed" error messages.
So the last thing the support document suggested was a complete erase and re-install. I have been running Time Machine, but have never actually used it to recover anything, much less the 1000s of photos and 1000s of songs on the iMac.
Is there anything else I can or should try before pulling the plug and erasing the hard drive and praying that Time Machine has worked?
My very pregnant wife will have a heart attack if we lost everything on the computer. (I really am not joking that she might go into labor any second, her due date was last week.)
Thanks for the help and advice. I need it.

I know that I am a bother and asking alot of questions in quick succession, but I am hoping to take care of this before the baby makes its appearance.
I'm getting you have a lot on your mind right now, try not to not worry about it. Might be time to take a few deep breaths and try to relax.
If you have had your machine connected to Time Machine and it has been doing backups (I'm sure it has been) you have done everything necessary.
You can attempt an erase and restore however if your disk is dodgy or has failed at best it's a temporary solution. As I stated I would recommend taking it into an AASP and have it looked at.

How do I access Disk Utility for 10.7.1?

How do I access Disk Utility for 10.7.1? I found it in the forums a few weeks ago, used it, then lost the directions. This is a last ditch attempt
to use OS Lion. I parted my hair incorrectly when I installed and have been plagued by the dread rainbow spinning ball in EVERY application. Yes, every. Name one, Safari, Firefox, Text Edit, Mail, Excel, Word, iTunes, Garage Band, Calculator, Calender, iPhoto....yes, every, and I cannot
find a solution that works. I have back up files on two different hard drives 500 gig and 1 terrabyte with all my music, photo and writing files.
I am a writer and a musician so imagine the frustration. OS 10.6 is an option of course. My dedication to Apple and each new OS is deep so
I am hoping that somehow there will a fix, an upgrade, something that does not require me to go bac to the much more endangered species named OS.
hahhaa! Just stalled waiting for the ball to finish with it's random spinning.... SO, this is like a last desperate .... it just did two more stalls.
NO OTHER apps running, just little Firefox holding on for dear life, last desperate request for a fix.
MacKeeper has been great in sending helpful directions for getting the Antivirus to work after it mysteriously decided to stop working, Quite MacKeeper, go to Activity Monitor, force quit helper, start up MacKeeper and run program. It works!
SO before my third stall stops me, please post directions to open disk utility in administration mode so that I can do any further repairs that have not worked by using it from the open system. Also keychain synching stopped working with Lion.
Thanks to any and all who can help.

Press and hold Command-R keys and reboot. You'll then start up in the Lion Recovery HD. You'll find Disk Utility there.
Command-R to the rescue.
Just hold down Command-R during startup and Lion Recovery springs into action. It lets you choose from common utilities: You can run Disk Utility to check or repair your hard drive, erase your hard drive and reinstall a fresh copy of Lion, or restore your Mac from a Time Machine backup. You can even use Safari to get help from Apple Support online. And if Lion Recovery encounters problems, it will automatically connect to Apple over the Internet.

Lion, Spinning Ball for a few seconds at a time

Macbook Pro, Lion, 8Gig. I have frequent encounters with the spinning ball. Everything stops, the ball comes on, stays for several seconds, then back to life. During the episodes Safari, for example, is completely unresponsive. During the episodes, I can click on another application and switch to it.
This mac has been through several generations of OS X, and several different physical machines, using Migration Assistant at each shift.
Any help gratefully received!
-- Sally
Here is the EtreCheck result:
Hardware Information:
          MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro6,2
          1 2.4 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 2 cores
          8 GB RAM
Video Information:
          NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M - VRAM: 256 MB
          Intel HD Graphics - VRAM: 288 MB
Startup Items:
          ProTec6b - Path: /Library/StartupItems/ProTec6b
          VirtualBox - Path: /Library/StartupItems/VirtualBox
System Software:
          Mac OS X 10.7.5 (11G63) - Uptime: 1 day 8:6
Disk Information:
          WDC WD5000BEVT-75ZAT0 disk0 : (500.11 GB)
                    disk0s1 (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB
                    Macintosh HD (disk0s2) /: 451.09 GB (47.76 GB free)
                    Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB
                    Snow Leopard (disk0s4) /Volumes/Snow Leopard: 48.03 GB (24.91 GB free)
          MATSHITADVD-R   UJ-898
USB Information:
          Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver
          Apple Inc. Built-in iSight
          Apple Inc. BRCM2070 Hub
                    Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
          Apple Internal Memory Card Reader 7.95 GB
                    NO NAME (disk4s1) /Volumes/NO NAME: 7.94 GB (3.12 GB free)
          Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad
FireWire Information:
Kernel Extensions:
          com.pgp.iokit.PGPwdeDriver          Version: 1.2.0d1
          at.obdev.nke.LittleSnitch          Version: 2.4.4
          com.paceap.kext.pacesupport.snowleopard          Version: 5.7.2
          com.AmbrosiaSW.AudioSupport          Version: 4.1.2
          org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv          Version: 4.2.4
          org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxUSB          Version: 4.2.4
          org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetFlt          Version: 4.2.4
          org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetAdp          Version: 4.2.4
Problem System Launch Daemons:
             [not loaded]          ftp-proxy.plist
Problem System Launch Agents:
                 [failed] com.apple.mrt.uiagent.plist
Launch Daemons:
                 [loaded] at.obdev.littlesnitchd.plist
                 [loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist
                 [loaded] com.adobe.SwitchBoard.plist
                 [loaded] com.ambrosiasw.ambrosiaaudiosupporthelper.daemon.plist
             [not loaded] com.barebones.bbedit.plist
                 [loaded] com.bombich.ccc.plist
                 [loaded] com.fitbit.fitbitd.plist
                 [loaded] com.google.keystone.daemon.plist
                 [loaded] com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist
                 [loaded] com.pgp.framework.PGPwde.plist
                 [loaded] com.pgp.wde.pgpwded.plist
             [not loaded] com.qdea.syncproxhelper.plist
                 [loaded] PACESupport.plist
Launch Agents:
                 [loaded] at.obdev.LittleSnitchNetworkMonitor.plist
                 [loaded] at.obdev.LittleSnitchUIAgent.plist
             [not loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist
                 [loaded] com.adobe.CS4ServiceManager.plist
                 [loaded] com.adobe.CS5ServiceManager.plist
                 [loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist
                 [loaded] com.pgp.pgpengine.plist
                 [loaded] com.wacom.wacomtablet.plist
                 [loaded] net.culater.SIMBL.Agent.plist
User Launch Agents:
                 [loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist
                 [loaded] com.adobe.ARM.ad895013aeb33ea6e968d9fdc06c0eb42c7c2a5229d98d64ad002716.plist
             [not loaded] org.virtualbox.vboxwebsrv.plist
                 [loaded] ws.agile.1PasswordAgent.plist
User Login Items:
          iTunesHelper
          ScanSnap Manager
          ProfileReminder
          PGP Engine
3rd Party Preference Panes:
          A Better Finder Preferences
          Flash Player
          Java
          WacomTablet
Internet Plug-ins:
          AdobeExManDetect.plugin
          AdobePDFViewer.plugin
          AmazonMP3DownloaderPlugin.plugin
          AmazonMP3DownloaderPlugin101736.plugin
          Flash Player.plugin
          FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin
          googletalkbrowserplugin.plugin
          JavaAppletPlugin.plugin
          npgtpo3dautoplugin.plugin
          o1dbrowserplugin.plugin
          QuickTime Plugin.plugin
          SharePointBrowserPlugin.plugin
          WacomNetscape.plugin
          WacomTabletPlugin.plugin
User Internet Plug-ins:
          CitrixOnlineWebDeploymentPlugin.plugin
          WebEx64.plugin
Bad Fonts:
          None
Top Processes by CPU:
              15%          WebProcess
              10%          WindowServer
               8%          Finder
               5%          backupd
               4%          activitymonitord
               2%          SystemUIServer
               2%          EtreCheck
               1%          diskimages-helper
               1%          hidd
               1%          mds
Top Processes by Memory:
          1 GB          Adobe
          819 MB          WebProcess
          311 MB          Mail
          295 MB          Safari
          254 MB          mds
          188 MB          WindowServer
          147 MB          quicklookd
          115 MB          Finder
          74 MB          BBEdit
          66 MB          PluginProcess

Hey Sally,
We have an article that outlines a few troubleshooting steps if your Mac is running a bit slowly.
OS X Lion: If your Mac runs slowly
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH3915
If you find your Mac is running slowly, check any open applications to make sure they’re compatible with your computer. Or you may need to increase your hard disk space or repair your hard disk.
An application you’re using may require more memory than your computer has. To see how much memory your computer has, choose Apple menu > About This Mac. See the documentation that came with the application to find out what it requires. To find out how to increase your computer’s memory, see the documentation that came with it.
Quit any application that isn’t compatible with your computer. For example, an application may require a different processor or graphics card. See the documentation that came with the application to find out what it requires.
To see what processor your computer has, choose Apple menu > About This Mac.
To see what graphics card your computer has, choose Apple menu > About This Mac, click More Info, and then click Displays.
There might not be enough free disk space on your computer’s startup disk. To make disk space available, you can move files to another disk and then delete files you no longer need on the startup disk.Increase disk space
Quit any applications you’re not using.
If none of these suggestions work, you may need to repair your computer’s disk in Disk Utility.Repair a disk
Hope this helps,
David

Disk Utility taking long time to open directory with disk images

Hi and thanks in advance.
I have a couple of CD and DVD disk images stored in a folder (and organized into several sub-folders) on a FAT32 volume.
The problem is that recently, Disk Utility takes forever to display the content of any of these folders when I select Open Disk Image from the File menu. The Select an Image to Attach dialog remains empty and the beach ball spins. After a very long time (10-15minutes? I've never had the patience to time it.), the contents will display, if at all. During this period of virtual inactivity, the program is unresponsive.
Since the FAT32 volume is also accessible from my Bootcamped Windows XP OS, I tried doing a disk check and a defragment but it hasn't improved my problem.
Any ideas?

HI,
Make sure your MacBookPro has sufficient free disk space to read the disk images.
Right or control click the MacintoshHD icon. Click Get Info. In the Get Info window you will see Capacity and Available. Make sure you always have a minimum of 10% to 15% free disk space at all times.
Carolyn
Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

Spinning Ball & Disk Utility

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