Spinning beach ball while wiping hard drive.

I've been wiping the 80 GB hard drive on my eMac before passing it on to a friend. I opted for the 8 pass of writing random data, and it's taken 3 days! It reached the 'creating partition map' stage yesterday and I've got the spinning beach ball and what looks like no progress on the progress bar since then. Is it stuck? What do I do? I don't want to crash out and start the process again, I need to get on with my life
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Crash it out, and do a quick reformat without erasing any data. That should only take a few minutes. And since your eMac has been overwriting for three days, your data is all safely gone now anyway.

Similar Messages

Spinning Beach ball while in Safari

I had an issue where I was trying to view a video from a website and received a message stating Adobe was working slow and do I want to quit. I said yes but then the beach ball appeared and no matter what I did (after allowing it to spin for a little while, thinking it would stop) I couldn't get out of the screen. I tried viewing other browser windows I had open, but still had the spinning beach ball. I couldn't open Finder or anything. On a PC, I could go to task manager and quit an application. How do I do that on a Mac? I tried CTL, ALT, Delete, or CTL, ALT, Command and whatever other combination I could think of. Finally I gave up and pressed the power button. I received the message asking if I wanted to Shut Down or Cancel. I said yes to shut it down but it didn't and the ball kept spinning. Finally I pressed the power button and held it until the computer shut down manually. I don't like doing that but I didn't know what else to do. Can someone tell me what I should do in a situation like this? I've had the spinning beach ball a couple times in the past week but for some reason today, it just wouldn't stop and I couldn't do anything on the computer.
Thank you

After solving the spinning beach ball: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/sbbod.html go to Adobe's site and download the latest Flash Player at http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ and get the uninstaller at http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html Uninstall the Flash Player and install the latest version, repair permissions, restart, and give Safari another try.

Spinning Beach Ball while MacMail checks mail

Every time MacMail goes to check or send mail, I get about 35 seconds (or sometimes a minute or two) of everyone's favorite spinning beach ball. This just started happening a few days ago.
Any suggestions?

Seems to be the same issue being discussed at http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1382146 since MARCH. Apple, are you listening?

Spinning ball while the hard drives warm up

Hi guys,
I have a G-Tech 1TB (Firewire 800) hard drive, a 500GB (Firewire 400) drive and two internal sata drives (not striped together) I also have a wireless keyboard and mouse.
If I leave the computer alone for a few minutes, each time I return to FCP, I have to wait for the spinning ball to stop. It sounds like the hard drives are warming up again, but its really annoying having to wait so often. I am working in a long project of 90 minutes length, but this also happens in shorther projects as well.
I have unchecked the 'put the hard drives to sleep as often as possible' and set the energy saver to 1 hour but no difference.
Any ideas?
Thanks as always.
Stephen - UK

you can minimize occurrences of the SBBOD due to hard drive sleep by making BOTH of the following selections in the Sleep tab of Energy Saver preferences:
1. select "Never" for System sleep, and
2. de-select "Put the hard drive to sleep when possible".
in Tiger, this is GUI equivalent of sending the "pmset" command in the terminal with the argument disksleep 0
or you could just jump straight into the terminal app (/Applications/Utilities/) and use the command
sudo pmset -a spindown 0

Spinning beach ball while erasing & partitioning new internal drive?

Is this normal. The beachball has been spinning for the last hour. I dont know how long the erasing & partitioning should take but I cant find out if it is working okay by checking the LOG because of spinning ball. Any ideas folks? Tracy

I seem to have this problem, although I don;t get the beach ball. Whenever I want to erase a partition, I click erase and wait for what seems like hours. After hours, it still says "preparing to erase disk". Any ideas?

I am getting a spinning beach ball. What is causing it and how do I get rid of it?

I am getting a spinning beach ball while trying to check emails and any other task on the internet. What is causing the spinning beach ball? How do i get rid of it?

Can you run EtreCheck and post the report here please?
EtreCheck: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6173

My mac is running slow, the spinning beach ball constantly appears. it seems that when i am in the apple store with fast wifi its a bit better. genius at the apple store checked the hard drive, it's all fine. what can it be?

my mac is running slow, the spinning beach ball constantly appears. it seems that when i am in the apple store with fast wifi its a bit better. genius at the apple store checked the hard drive, it's all fine. what can it be? can it be a software issue with the wifi?
also i noted that it has only been doing this since quite recently, before it was fine
please help!

First, back up all data immediately, as your boot drive might be failing.
Step 1
This diagnostic procedure will query the log for messages that may indicate a system issue. It changes nothing, and therefore will not, in itself, solve your problem.
If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
syslog -k Sender kernel -k Message CReq 'GPU |hfs: Ru|I/O e|find tok|n Cause: -|NVDA\(|timed? ?o' | tail | open -ef
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
Launch the 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.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key.
The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. Normally the command will produce no output, and the window will be empty. If the TextEdit window (not the Terminal window) has anything in it, stop here and post it — the text, please, not a screenshot. The title of the TextEdit window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that.
Step 2
There are a few other possible causes of generalized slow performance that you can rule out easily.
Disconnect all non-essential wired peripherals and remove aftermarket expansion cards, if any.
Reset the System Management Controller.
Run Software Update. If there's a firmware update, install it.
If you're booting from an aftermarket SSD, see whether there's a firmware update for it.
If you have a portable computer, check the cycle count of the battery. It may be due for replacement.
If you have many image or video files on the Desktop with preview icons, move them to another folder.
If applicable, uncheck all boxes in the iCloud preference pane. See whether there's any change.
Check your keychains in Keychain Access for excessively duplicated items.
Boot into Recovery mode, launch Disk Utility, and run Repair Disk.
If you have a MacBook Pro with dual graphics, disable automatic graphics switching in the Energy Saverpreference pane for better performance at the cost of shorter battery life.
Step 3
When you notice the problem, 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.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Activity Monitor in the icon grid.
Select the CPU tab of the Activity Monitor window.
Select All Processes from the View menu or 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 Memory tab. What value is shown in the bottom part of the window for Swap used?
Next, select the Disk tab. Post the approximate values shown for Reads in/sec and Writes out/sec (not Reads in andWrites out.)
Step 4
If you have more than one user account, you must be logged in as an administrator to carry out this step.
Launch the Console application in the same way you launched Activity Monitor. 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. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Select the 50 or so most recent entries in the log. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combinationcommand-C. Paste into a reply to this message (command-V). You're looking for entries at the end of the log, not at the beginning.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some personal information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting. That should be easy to do if your extract is not too long.

Spinning beach ball after hard drive upgrade

Im running a macbook pro i7 2.2ghz 8gb ram version 10.6.8 SL
I recently upgraded my 128gb ssd to a 512gb ssd drive. I cloned the drive to new drive and ever since then, I get the spinning beach ball very often whereas I never got it prior to the hard drive upgrade. Is there anything I can check or do to eliminate the freeze ups? It is VERY annoying. Or do I just need to do a fresh install on the new hard drive.
thanks in advance

Did you properly prep the drive first:
Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
If you are preparing an external or a non-startup drive, then open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

External Hard Drive Causing Spinning Beach Ball - 27" iMac

I have a brand new 27" iMac with the Core i7 processor. There are no modifications to the unit. I do however have a portable USB hard drive plugged into the unit. Now I imagine that after some time the iMac is putting the USB hard drive to sleep because of non-use. However, after I walk away from the iMac (my iMac is set to sleep after 3 hours) for 30 minutes or so and come back and start using some applications one will eventually slow down and the spinning beach ball appears. For example, when I come back to the iMac after 30 minutes and log back in and launch Mail everything is fine. Then I might launch Safari and all of a sudden the USB hard drive spins up and the spinning beach ball appears. Can someone tell me how to correct this so it does not cause these hang-ups?
Thanks in advance,
Mike

Hi Mike,
Western Digital external HDs are known for their rather 'dubious' sleep/No-sleep behaviour.
I have two older ones myself with the same oddity.
Have a look here http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=300839 and maybe use the app mentioned there http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/31158/keep-drive-spinning
Regards
Stefan

Problem description: My macbook pro since this afteon has been slower, every application I open, it takes a long time to open, and shows the spinning beach ball for a while before it opens or performs some task, or responds to a click- EtreCheck

My computer
Problem description:
My macbook pro since this afternoon has been slower, every application I open, it takes a long time to open, and shows the spinning beach ball for a while before it opens or performs some task, or responds to a click…
EtreCheck version: 2.1.8 (121)
Report generated 31 de março de 2015 18:29:15 BRT
Download EtreCheck from http://etresoft.com/etrecheck
Click the [Click for support] links for help with non-Apple products.
Click the [Click for details] links for more information about that line.
Hardware Information: ℹ️
    MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2011) (Technical Specifications)
    MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro8,1
    1 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 2-core
    16 GB RAM Upgradeable
        BANK 0/DIMM0
            8 GB DDR3 1333 MHz ok
        BANK 1/DIMM0
            8 GB DDR3 1333 MHz ok
    Bluetooth: Old - Handoff/Airdrop2 not supported
    Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n
    Battery Health: Normal - Cycle count 250
Video Information: ℹ️
    Intel HD Graphics 3000 - VRAM: 512 MB
        Color LCD 1280 x 800
System Software: ℹ️
    OS X 10.10.2 (14C1514) - Time since boot: 0:25:47
Disk Information: ℹ️
    Hitachi HTS545032B9A302 disk0 : (320,07 GB)
        EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted> : 210 MB
        Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted> [Recovery]: 650 MB
        Macintosh HD (disk1) / : 318.84 GB (47.94 GB free) - 51 errors
            Core Storage: disk0s2 319.21 GB Online
    MATSHITADVD-R   UJ-898
USB Information: ℹ️
    Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad
    Apple Inc. BRCM2070 Hub
        Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
    Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)
    Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver
Thunderbolt Information: ℹ️
    Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus
Gatekeeper: ℹ️
    Mac App Store and identified developers
Launch Agents: ℹ️
    [not loaded]    com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist [Click for support]
    [loaded]    com.oracle.java.Java-Updater.plist [Click for support]
    [running]    com.trusteer.rapport.rapportd.plist [Click for support]
Launch Daemons: ℹ️
    [loaded]    com.adobe.fpsaud.plist [Click for support]
    [loaded]    com.adobe.SwitchBoard.plist [Click for support]
    [loaded]    com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist [Click for support]
    [loaded]    com.oracle.java.Helper-Tool.plist [Click for support]
    [loaded]    com.oracle.java.JavaUpdateHelper.plist [Click for support]
    [running]    com.trusteer.rooks.rooksd.plist [Click for support]
User Launch Agents: ℹ️
    [loaded]    com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist [Click for support]
    [loaded]    com.adobe.ARM.[...].plist [Click for support]
    [loaded]    com.google.keystone.agent.plist [Click for support]
    [running]    com.spotify.webhelper.plist [Click for support]
User Login Items: ℹ️
    iTunesHelper    UNKNOWN Hidden (missing value)
    AdobeResourceSynchronizer    Application Hidden (/Applications/Adobe Reader.app/Contents/Support/AdobeResourceSynchronizer.app)
    Stickies    Application (/Applications/Stickies.app)
Internet Plug-ins: ℹ️
    JavaAppletPlugin: Version: Java 8 Update 31 Check version
    FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 17.0.0.134 - SDK 10.6 [Click for support]
    Default Browser: Version: 600 - SDK 10.10
    AdobePDFViewerNPAPI: Version: 10.1.13 [Click for support]
    AdobePDFViewer: Version: 10.1.13 [Click for support]
    Flash Player: Version: 17.0.0.134 - SDK 10.6 [Click for support]
    QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3
    SharePointBrowserPlugin: Version: 14.4.8 - SDK 10.6 [Click for support]
    Google Earth Web Plug-in: Version: 7.1 [Click for support]
    Silverlight: Version: 5.1.30514.0 - SDK 10.6 [Click for support]
    iPhotoPhotocast: Version: 7.0 - SDK 10.8
User internet Plug-ins: ℹ️
    npsf_cef: Version: sf 3.3.1.1 [Click for support]
    Google Earth Web Plug-in: Version: Unknown
Safari Extensions: ℹ️
    DivX HiQ
    DivX Plus Web Player HTML5 <video>
3rd Party Preference Panes: ℹ️
    Flash Player [Click for support]
    Java [Click for support]
    MacFUSE [Click for support]
    Perian [Click for support]
    Trusteer Endpoint Protection [Click for support]
Time Machine: ℹ️
    Skip System Files: NO
    Auto backup: YES
    Volumes being backed up:
        Macintosh HD: Disk size: 318.84 GB Disk used: 270.90 GB
    Destinations:
        Time Machine Backups [Local]
        Total size: 999.86 GB
        Total number of backups: 60
        Oldest backup: 2012-07-15 01:16:54 +0000
        Last backup: 2015-03-29 19:28:06 +0000
        Size of backup disk: Excellent
            Backup size 999.86 GB > (Disk size 318.84 GB X 3)
Top Processes by CPU: ℹ️
        97%    rapportd
         3%    WindowServer
         1%    mds
         0%    fseventsd
         0%    distnoted
Top Processes by Memory: ℹ️
    155 MB    Safari
    120 MB    Finder
    86 MB    rapportd
    86 MB    WindowServer
    69 MB    mds_stores
Virtual Memory Information: ℹ️
    12.56 GB    Free RAM
    2.53 GB    Active RAM
    428 MB    Inactive RAM
    1.66 GB    Wired RAM
    1.04 GB    Page-ins
    0 B    Page-outs
Diagnostics Information: ℹ️
    Mar 31, 2015, 06:00:15 PM    Self test - passed
    Mar 31, 2015, 01:13:05 PM    /Users/[redacted]/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Microsoft Error Reporting_2015-03-31-131305_[redacted].crash
    Mar 31, 2015, 01:05:42 PM    /Users/[redacted]/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Microsoft Error Reporting_2015-03-31-130542_[redacted].crash
    Mar 31, 2015, 12:24:33 PM    /Users/[redacted]/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Microsoft Error Reporting_2015-03-31-122433_[redacted].crash
    Mar 30, 2015, 05:45:38 PM    /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Skype_2015-03-30-174538_[redacted].cpu_resource .diag [Click for details]
    Mar 30, 2015, 01:52:07 PM    /Users/[redacted]/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Last.fm Scrobbler_2015-03-30-135207_[redacted].crash
    Mar 29, 2015, 05:55:05 PM    /Users/[redacted]/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/com.apple.WebKit.WebContent_20 15-03-29-175505_[redacted].crash
    Mar 29, 2015, 01:06:38 PM    /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/VLC_2015-03-29-130638_[redacted].hang
    Mar 29, 2015, 01:02:47 PM    /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/VLC_2015-03-29-130247_[redacted].hang

Open Activity Monitor and kill this process - rapportd.
Reinstalling OS X Without Erasing the Drive
Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Reinstalling OS X Without Erasing the Drive
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility and press the Continue button. After Disk Utility loads select the Macintosh HD entry from the the left side list. Click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If Disk Utility reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit Disk Utility and return to the main menu.
Reinstall OS X: Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Continue button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.
Alternatively, see:
Reinstall OS X Without Erasing the Drive
Choose the version you have installed now:
OS X Yosemite- Reinstall OS X
OS X Mavericks- Reinstall OS X
OS X Mountain Lion- Reinstall OS X
OS X Lion- Reinstall Mac OS X
     Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet
                 if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

New MacBook and The Infinitely Spinning Beach Ball: Anybody Else?

I wonder if I'm the only MacBook owner having this experience, or if there might be some company in my misery?
I purchased a new Aluminum MacBook on Nov.14. This one is the high-end, 2.4GHz model with 4GB of RAM and currently running OSX 10.5.5.
I have in the past few days (or week, or so) encountered what appears to be an intermittent performance failure. I will, for example, be in Apple Mail: Open a new message to compose, and as soon as I click on the open window, the beach balls starts spinning... and continues to spin for a minute or two. Typically, when this starts happening, when I get the cursor back I click again, and the beachball resumes spinning.
This will also happen in Firefox, or, as it did yesterday, even accessing items in the upper-right menu bar. Suspecting an impending hard-drive failure, I clicked the Time Capsule icon in the menu to see when I got my last backup, and instead of getting Time Capsule, I got... the spinning beach ball of death.
The most difficult thing about this dilemma is that it appears to be intermittent. I took the MacBook to the dealer that sold it to me yesterday, was unable to replicate the issues. Everything worked fine in the store. Came home, problem returned for about 10 or 15 minutes, then it went away and the computer performed normally until I closed the lid to go out for the evening.
Then this morning I opened the lid again and.... spinning beach balls for a total of about 17 minutes. And now, again, it appears to be working fine.
While I was at the store, we ran a disc verify in disk utility, and it returned the message "The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK."
This is the worst kind of problem -- the intermittent one. I suspect something in the computer itself, in the believe that hardware issues are more likely to be intermittent than software issues; I could be wrong about that, I dunno.
All I do know is that I can have maddening periods when I can't do anything with the computer, and then, just as suddenly, everything goes back to normal.
So I wonder if there might be anything in the circuitry in these new MacBooks that might be causing a similar problem for others. Or is this my unique cross to bear until the thing goes completely south?
Thanks,
--PS

Have you tried running the diagnostics from the Leopard disc? If not, give it a go to see what it finds. To run it, boot while holding the "d" key (with Leopard disc in ofcourse).
Haven't tried that, I did not know that was on the disk. I'll run it, how long might it take? What sort of tests does it run, what sort of results should I expect?
Another thing to try is reset the SMC.
Following the link you provided suggests there might be some things in the SMC that could be causing my problems. Should I do that before or after I run the diagnostics? Would the diagnostics tell me if that's something I need to do?
If still nothing... perhaps a reinstall of Leopard.
I call that the "Vietnam Solution" -- destroying the village in order to save it. I thought was done with that sort of thing when I abandoned PCs and Windows. Not a desirable outcome.
As a last resort, you might consider trying a new hard drive. A failing drive can cause theses intermittent delays.
That was my initial thought, too. Are there any diagnostics I can run besides dick utility to determine the integrity of the hard drive? Do the diagnostics on the Leopard install disk do that?
Thanks,
--PS

Spinning beach ball for 45-60 seconds, then fine

For several months now, I've had the spinning beach ball issue on my Macbook Pro. Within the first 5 minutes after boot up, the spinning beach ball will occur, seemingly at random (no specific app or action), for 45-60 seconds. While this happens, the system becomes completely unresponsive. But after this occurrence within the first five minutes after startup, it never happens again and everything is fine - until I reboot of course.
I am running Snow Leopard and this problem was happening before I installed Snow Leopard, so that's not it. But one thing I did do, which I am semi-convinced is the culprit, is I replaced my hard drive with a Seagate 500 mb Momentus drive. The actual model # is SEAST9500420AS. I don't know for sure, but that's around the time this issue first started. I know there is/was a spinning beach ball problem with the newer Macbook Pros and they were attributing it to the hard drive which just so happens to be the same hard drive I now have in my Macbook Pro. There was recently an EFI update that seemed to fix the problem for the newer models, but mine is the first generation right when they went to Intel chips (bought mine in April, 2006). Problem is, if it is my drive, this new EFI update that fixes the issue on the new models won't install on mine.
I also did a verify disk and repair disk permissions, but that was no help. Another thing I found going through the discussion groups was that the problem could happen because both the Macbook Pro and the Seagate drive have anti-shock technology that could conflict with one another. So if you disabled the anti-shock on the Macbook Pro, it might solve the problem as it seemed to for some folks out there. But I did that and it didn't help either.
I'm thinking it's my hard drive, but don't know how to fix it. But it could be something I haven't looked at yet or thought of. I've been trying everything the last several months with no luck and it's been driving me batty! What's really strange is it only happens once and always within the first 5 minutes after start up. Anybody have any suggestions? Thanks.

I just finished doing lots of different tests to try to solve my problem. Didn't resolve it, but I did manage to eliminate some things and narrow it down further.
First I removed all my login items and restarted my computer. That didn't fix the problem.
So then I thought it might have something to do with Safari since that's one of the first things I open up when I start my computer and there are numerous reports in the discussions of spinning beach balls with Safari 4.0.3 which I have. So I purposely did not open Safari after startup. Problem still happened.
So then I thought maybe it has something to do with my internet connection. So I disconnected my internet connection and rebooted. Then I only opened programs that don't use online access. I leisurely opened up a program, did a few things in it, closed it, and then did the same thing with another program. Did some things with Finder. Purposely did not rush things. Waited 4-5 seconds after every operation's completion before executing another task. Never had more than one program open at any given time to eliminate any issue with two many resources open. You guessed it - the problem STILL happened. Not that it matters, but it happened when I hit Command-I on my hard drive icon to get the info pane. A fairly innocuous task. Froze up with the spinning beach ball for at least 45-50 seconds. Tried clicking a few other things while this was happening, but nothing. Once it freed up, a few things I clicked on previously suddenly became active and everything was fine again. Tried Command-I for a lot of different things with no problem. Response was instantaneous.
It pretty much happens 3-4 minutes into a session and then never happens again. And I think my test here eliminated several possibilities. Very frustrating. I hope this helps someone come up with a possible solution. Thanks.

Spinning beach ball woes on 27 inch iMac

We have a mid 2010 27 inch iMac (and also a late 2010 13 inch MacBook Air, from which I am writing this post). About 6 months ago it was starting to get spinning beach balls, which I attributed to not having updated the OS (then 10.7). Having upgraded the Air to Mavericks with success, I also upgraded the iMac to Mavericks, and the beach balls got much, much worse, rendering the thing nearly unusable. I cannot for the life of me figure out what the issue is, particularly because the Air, which is about the same vintage, is working great under the same setup. Can someone who has not been staring at this problem for 6 months help?
Here's what I've got:
As I mentioned, mid 2010 27-inch iMac, 1TB hard drive, about half-full, backing up to a 2 TB Time Capsule.
We have two wifi networks to cover the whole house; one is integrated with the cable company's provided router and sits in the basement, and the other is the Time Capsule hooked up to the cable company's VoIP router upstairs. Because you cannot use the Time Capsule to extend an existing network if it is not an Apple network, I resorted to setting each wifi network up independently (separately connected to ethernet). My Air navigates this just fine, as do our iPads/iPhones, and I don't notice a speed difference between the two networks (assuming I have equally good reception wherever I am).
Notably, the Time Capsule seems to randomly stop broadcasting wifi every now and then (at intervals of a few days to a couple weeks), which requires a restart to get it working again. (This could be totally unrelated.)
The iMac was at 10.7 when the beach balls started; upgrading to Mavericks made the slowness/beachballs worse. As I noted, Mavericks did not cause any trouble with the Air.
The beach balls seem to coincide with a complete stall in everything the computer is doing. After the stall ends, the computer can be fairly speedy, so it's as if it pauses for several seconds to a minute or so to think very hard, and then goes back to its business.
There is usually a slight improvement if I shut down and boot up again, but it gums up pretty quickly.
Here's what I've done:
Started with 4GB RAM; added another 8 (total 12) after this all started. Equally bad before and after.
Stared at Activity Monitor and Console for long periods of time while watching for beach balls to try to detect a pattern.
In Activity Monitor, memory pressure is fine (esp. now that I added 8 GB), no swap used. The two worst offenders under CPU usage seem to be kernel_task or WindowServer, but they are not always monopolizing the CPU at the times when it is stalled.
In Console, the main two patterns seemed to be a frequent WindowServer "updates forcibly disabled" error, and what seemed like a constant browsing for wifi connections even though the computer was already connected to wifi. However, I couldn't figure out what either of these meant or what might be done to fix them.
Used disk utility, repaired permissions, verified disk, etc. - everything was ok, although some permissions were repaired.
Used third-party utilities, Onyx and iDefrag, to try to verify disk and clean things up. No significant problems detected, and no improvement.
Various other methods of cleaning up -- eliminating old software or files that aren't being used, emptying trash, taking extra files off the desktop, etc. In particular, having read that Mail might have issues handling Google accounts, I eliminated a heavily-used Google account from Mail and got a separate, lighter-weight third-party app to handle that account. That did seem improve things at first, but we seem to be back to slowness and beach balls again.
Final, last-ditch effort: backed up and then erased hard drive and (after another Disk Utility verify - still fine) did a clean install of Mavericks.
It took several attempts to download the installer using the Time Capsule network (kept stalling); switched to the other (non-Apple) wifi network and it downloaded and installed fine.
However, after the clean install, although it was not nearly as slow as before, amazingly, I still had spinning beach balls and hanging without having installed anything other than the OS.
I made several attempts to get into the backup to selectively reinstall files. Could not mount backup using Time Capsule -- option-clicking and selecting "Browse Other Backups" did not actually get me to the other backup. Using Migration Assistant, could not get the backup to load, or the loading was taking an inordinately long period of time, so I gave up. (Also, every time I tried to quit Migration Assistant to try to discover the problem with the backup loading, it hung and I had to hard-restart.)
So, since the clean install did not seem to fix the problem, and I was starting to worry about not being able to get to my backup, I have gone back to just restoring from the Time Capsule. It's telling me this will take over 200 hours.
The one thing I haven't tried is shutting down the computer, lugging it upstairs, and connecting it to Time Capsule via ethernet, at least for the restoration. I will do this if I leave the computer overnight and it's still not done in the morning.
I've done much searching of these discussion boards, and tried everything that seemed like a possible culprit. What am I missing? (Other than ditching this computer and buying a different one?)

We have a mid 2010 27 inch iMac (and also a late 2010 13 inch MacBook Air, from which I am writing this post). About 6 months ago it was starting to get spinning beach balls, which I attributed to not having updated the OS (then 10.7). Having upgraded the Air to Mavericks with success, I also upgraded the iMac to Mavericks, and the beach balls got much, much worse, rendering the thing nearly unusable. I cannot for the life of me figure out what the issue is, particularly because the Air, which is about the same vintage, is working great under the same setup. Can someone who has not been staring at this problem for 6 months help?
Here's what I've got:
As I mentioned, mid 2010 27-inch iMac, 1TB hard drive, about half-full, backing up to a 2 TB Time Capsule.
We have two wifi networks to cover the whole house; one is integrated with the cable company's provided router and sits in the basement, and the other is the Time Capsule hooked up to the cable company's VoIP router upstairs. Because you cannot use the Time Capsule to extend an existing network if it is not an Apple network, I resorted to setting each wifi network up independently (separately connected to ethernet). My Air navigates this just fine, as do our iPads/iPhones, and I don't notice a speed difference between the two networks (assuming I have equally good reception wherever I am).
Notably, the Time Capsule seems to randomly stop broadcasting wifi every now and then (at intervals of a few days to a couple weeks), which requires a restart to get it working again. (This could be totally unrelated.)
The iMac was at 10.7 when the beach balls started; upgrading to Mavericks made the slowness/beachballs worse. As I noted, Mavericks did not cause any trouble with the Air.
The beach balls seem to coincide with a complete stall in everything the computer is doing. After the stall ends, the computer can be fairly speedy, so it's as if it pauses for several seconds to a minute or so to think very hard, and then goes back to its business.
There is usually a slight improvement if I shut down and boot up again, but it gums up pretty quickly.
Here's what I've done:
Started with 4GB RAM; added another 8 (total 12) after this all started. Equally bad before and after.
Stared at Activity Monitor and Console for long periods of time while watching for beach balls to try to detect a pattern.
In Activity Monitor, memory pressure is fine (esp. now that I added 8 GB), no swap used. The two worst offenders under CPU usage seem to be kernel_task or WindowServer, but they are not always monopolizing the CPU at the times when it is stalled.
In Console, the main two patterns seemed to be a frequent WindowServer "updates forcibly disabled" error, and what seemed like a constant browsing for wifi connections even though the computer was already connected to wifi. However, I couldn't figure out what either of these meant or what might be done to fix them.
Used disk utility, repaired permissions, verified disk, etc. - everything was ok, although some permissions were repaired.
Used third-party utilities, Onyx and iDefrag, to try to verify disk and clean things up. No significant problems detected, and no improvement.
Various other methods of cleaning up -- eliminating old software or files that aren't being used, emptying trash, taking extra files off the desktop, etc. In particular, having read that Mail might have issues handling Google accounts, I eliminated a heavily-used Google account from Mail and got a separate, lighter-weight third-party app to handle that account. That did seem improve things at first, but we seem to be back to slowness and beach balls again.
Final, last-ditch effort: backed up and then erased hard drive and (after another Disk Utility verify - still fine) did a clean install of Mavericks.
It took several attempts to download the installer using the Time Capsule network (kept stalling); switched to the other (non-Apple) wifi network and it downloaded and installed fine.
However, after the clean install, although it was not nearly as slow as before, amazingly, I still had spinning beach balls and hanging without having installed anything other than the OS.
I made several attempts to get into the backup to selectively reinstall files. Could not mount backup using Time Capsule -- option-clicking and selecting "Browse Other Backups" did not actually get me to the other backup. Using Migration Assistant, could not get the backup to load, or the loading was taking an inordinately long period of time, so I gave up. (Also, every time I tried to quit Migration Assistant to try to discover the problem with the backup loading, it hung and I had to hard-restart.)
So, since the clean install did not seem to fix the problem, and I was starting to worry about not being able to get to my backup, I have gone back to just restoring from the Time Capsule. It's telling me this will take over 200 hours.
The one thing I haven't tried is shutting down the computer, lugging it upstairs, and connecting it to Time Capsule via ethernet, at least for the restoration. I will do this if I leave the computer overnight and it's still not done in the morning.
I've done much searching of these discussion boards, and tried everything that seemed like a possible culprit. What am I missing? (Other than ditching this computer and buying a different one?)

10.4.7 Runs Slow, Spinning Beach Ball, "kass" takes over system

To the helpful frequenters of this forum:
Since installing Tiger and updating to 10.4.7 recently, I have experienced some major system slow downs on my computer. I am running a Titanium Powerbook G4 with 512MB RAM and 12GB free (from a 60GB hard drive).
My problems seem to center on Mail 2 app, which runs very slowly when accessing the IMAP server (a problem I never experienced with Mail 1 in the days of Panther). However, it extends to other applications: when launching iTunes and Safari, I often get a spinning beach ball and a 10-20 second hang that I never had before. Sometimes closing programs can take a long time. Force quit often does not respond, but for some reason pressing my laptop power key (as if to turn off the computer) helps to get things jump-started.
In my Activity Monitor, there is a Process called "kass" that is eating up anywhere from 20-30% of my processor. I think that this is connected to some sort of Key Access software that might have been installed on my computer for my college access, but I am not sure. Here are the details from Activity Monitor:
/Library/KeyAccess/KeyAccess.app/Contents/SharedSupport/kass.app/Contents/MacOS/ kass
/System/Library/CoreServices/CharacterSets/CFUnicodeData-B.mapping
/System/Library/CoreServices/CharacterSets/CFCharacterSetBitmaps.bitmap
/Library/Caches/com.apple.IntlDataCache.sbdl.501
/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.fram ework/Versions/A/Resources/Extras.rsrc
/usr/lib/dyld
/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/A TS.framework/Versions/A/ATS
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/C oreGraphics.framework/Versions/A/CoreGraphics
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation
/usr/lib/libobjc.A.dylib
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CarbonCo re.framework/Versions/A/CarbonCore
/System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Versions/A/Security
/System/Library/Frameworks/SystemConfiguration.framework/Versions/A/SystemConfig uration
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/Q D.framework/Versions/A/QD
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/H IServices.framework/Versions/A/HIServices
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DesktopServicesPriv.framework/Versions/A/Deskt opServicesPriv
/System/Library/Frameworks/Foundation.framework/Versions/C/Foundation
/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.fram ework/Versions/A/HIToolbox
/dev/null
/dev/console
/dev/console
obj=0x018abb38
/tmp/ipc1801548659-5307728
/tmp/ipc1801548659-5307728
obj=0x01a2df08
/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.fram ework/Versions/A/Resources/Extras.rsrc
What I don't understand is why this is flaring up now, since the Key Access has always been there (on OS 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 as I upgraded sequentially). Perhaps there is some sort of bad interaction with the 10.4.7 upgrade? I'm not really sure, but I was wondering how I would go about eliminating this hang up. It might be the source of so much slowing down on my computer!
Thank you very much,
Matthew

Thanks for your help, everyone.
I seem to have solved the problem. The "kass" function was linked to KeyAccess, an app made by Sassafrass. This app was installed on my computer by my University so that I could use certain programs (such as Adobe Photoshop) while on the school network by obtaining a key through the school Internet connection. For some reason this process started to take over my computer once I upgraded to 10.4.7, so I just removed the application from my computer all together. Now the hang-ups in other programs, as well as the IMAP email seem to be back to their old speediness.
Strange how these things work.
Matthew

My MacBook is very slow and constantly has the spinning beach ball of death!!!

In the last couple if weeks my MacBook has suddenly slowed down a LOT. Sometimes it takes ages for it to boot up when I turn it on and at other times not as long. Then once I log in, as soon as I click on something, the spinning beach ball appears and won't go away so I have to force it to restart.
It runs a little bit faster in safe mode and if I log in as a guest user, but it's still relatively slow.
So far I have tried the following:
- starting in safe mode
- resetting PRAM
- turning off then pressing ctrl, option, left shift and the power button for 10 seconds then turn it back on
- repairing disk permissions
I've been told that it might be best to reformat my mac, but in order to do this I need to back up. I bought a Seagate Back Up Plus 1TB and tried to use time machine. After a while a message popped up saying "Time Machine Error. Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.". There is something on my hard drive, but I cant tell if my mac has fully backed up or not.
Any suggestions?

How large is your HD and how much space do you have left?
Check out the following & do the necessary:
User Tip: Why is my computer slow?
What to do when your computer is too slow
Speeding up your Mac
===========
Troubleshoot the spinning beach ball/freezing & crashing
Troubleshoot the spinning beach ball
Apple OSX and Time Machine Tips (Leopard - ML
Mac Basics: Time Machine
OS X Mountain Lion: Alternatives for backing up your Mac
User Tip: Most commonly used backup methods
Emergency backups you didn't know you had!

Spinning beach ball while wiping hard drive.

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