Why does my mac frequently freeze for several minutes at a time with rotating beach ball?

I have plenty of memory and plenty of disk space.
I have run "fix permissions" on my disk multiple times.

Troubleshoot the spinning beach ball
Common symptoms of a dying hard drive
Hard drive is making a clicking, whirring, grinding, ping pong ball noise or any other type of unusual noises.
Hard drive is not spinning.
Computer is not recognizing the hard drive.
Sluggish loading of applications.
System freezes and hangs.

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Why does my mac pro freeze on start up ?

Why does my mac pro freeze on start up ? Some times this three or four times before i can get it to start correctly.

Model Name:          Mac Pro
Model Identifier:          MacPro4,1
Processor Name:          Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed:          2.26 GHz
Number Of Processors:          2
Total Number Of Cores:          8
L2 Cache (per core):          256 KB
L3 Cache (per processor):          8 MB
Memory:          6 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed:          5.86 GT/s
Boot ROM Version:          MP41.0081.B07
SMC Version (system):          1.39f5
SMC Version (processor tray):          1.39f5
Sorry i am new to mac & communities , when you say repair the drives and clone the system what do you mean ?

Why does my mac keep freezing when i link to sites with videos

why does my mac keep freezing when i link to sites with videos

Do you have any better luck with that if you update to iTunes 10.6.1.7?
From the notes for the release:
iTunes 10.6.1 provides a number of improvements, including:
• Fixes several issues that may cause iTunes to unexpectedly quit while playing videos, changing artwork size in Grid view and syncing photos to devices.
• Addresses an issue where some iTunes interface elements are incorrectly described by VoiceOver and WindowEyes.
• Fixes a problem where iTunes may become unresponsive while syncing iPod nano or iPod shuffle.
• Resolves an ordering problem while browsing TV episodes in your iTunes library on Apple TV.
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

Why does my mac sometimes freeze when waking up?

Why does my mac sometimes freeze when waking up? It only happens sometimes, but also happens spontaneously. 21' iMac 2011 model. It just started recenlty after a new firmware update from apple. Any advice or reasons why would be appreciated.

boot to lion recovery and run verify/repair on the hard drive. verify will say: appears to be okay OR needs to be repaired. No matter what outcome, you will repair anyways (as it will do some updating on the volume)
Process: hold command R during startup/ wait till you see mac os utility (might have to select english as the main language first) then disk utility/ select macintosh HD on the left, and then verify/repair on the right bottom side. Cheers!

I have been having a lot of problems since downloading the IOS7 on my iPad whereby it freezes for several minutes. Can anyone help me or is there something I should be doing right away when this happens?

I have been having lots of problems with my iPad 2 freezing since I downloaded the IOS7. It freezes for several minutes each time this happens. Is there something you can suggest that I do to eliminate this problem in the future?

First thing to try is a reset: Hold down the home button along with the sleep/wake button until you see the apple, then let go.

Why does my mac mini's mouse show a pinwheel every time I hover over the date area? Also, sometimes the date shows up incorrectly.

Why does my mac mini's mouse show a pinwheel every time I hover over the date area? Also, sometimes the date/time shows up incorrectly. It started happening after I updated to OS X Mountain Lion.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
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.
Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Try the action that you're having trouble with again. Post any messages that appear in the Console window – the text, please, not a screenshot.
When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into a message.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Edit it out by search-and-replace in a text editor before posting.

I keep getting a spinning color wheel when I start safari or mail and it holds up my iMac for several minutes. At times I need to do a hard reset as it freezes e everything ... I'm stumped! Software is up to date ... Help!

I keep getting a spinning color wheel when I start safari or mail and it holds up my iMac for several minutes. At times I need to do a hard reset as it freezes e everything ... I'm stumped! Software is up to date ... Help!

den.thed wrote:
John has suggested rebuilding the Mail mailboxes. Once Mail is open, go to: Mailbox on the menu bar and select Rebuild.
As for Safari, is it opening and working if you open it before Mail and what if any Extensions are you using?
OK ... so I just restarted and opened Safari first ... no spinning ball. And I opened mail after hitting the rebuild, well, I'm missing messages from Dec. 24 - now, but it opened right away. Most messages are FB feeds, so it's not like I've lost anything important. So, initial thoughts ... John was a tremendous help, BUT, we shall see what happens when I try to open mail again ... and I'll try it first with the next restart or wake up ... so appreiciate the walk-thru on all of this!

Spinning wheel stays on for several minutes at a time, can't connect to app store

Hi I have an imac, about two years old. It has recently started freezing constantly, can't connect to the app store and the rainbow spinning wheel stays up for several minutes at a time regardless of what apps are open or what I'm trying to do. Safari will work for a minute or two then will say it can't connect, I then have to quit the app then open it back up to have it fail again shortly after. I've cleared out my cache, started it in safe mode, done the disk repair through disk utility, done virus scans and nothing has helped. It started doing it suddenly - fine one day then not the next - but I haven't put any new apps on or made any changes I can think of that might be the cause. Can anyone help?

One possibility is that your hard drive is failing. If you don't have backups of any data you don't want to lose, that needs to be your number one priority. Get that data backed up. Once you have done that, you can start exploring options.
Open Disk Utility, select your hard drive and take a look at the SMART status:
If it says anything other than Verified, the drive is definitely failing. If it says Verified, all that means is that it isn't failing in a way that the drive can detect.

Coloured spinning wheel for several minutes at a time

Help! Whenever we try and do anything in iMovie we get coloured spinning wheel for many minutes at a time. It won't do anything without "thinking" for ages. We have imported quite a lot of footage. Have we filled up its little brain?

Which Mac do you have? How much memory is installed?

Why does my Mac keep freezing and applications not responding?!?

Hello everyone, I have a mid 2009 MacBook Pro, 500gb HD, 4gb ram. The problem is that it keeps freezing. I am writing this on my iPhone because my laptop would probably just freeze up if I even attempted to open an application. The problem is that my laptop won't stop freezing up. As soon as I have any application open, it will stop being responsive, give me the beach ball spinning wheel thing, and I'll use command-option-escape to open the force quit menu (because at this point the mouse usually can me moved around the screen but just makes the system get worse) to force quit what ever applications I have open. Then finder will stop responding, and then nothing will work until I do a forced shut down (hold the power button down) and turn it back on again, where the same thing happens within a minute. I tried repairing permissions and doing a P RAM reset, but have had no success with either. Please help, this is ridiculous, I can barely use my laptop and I need it for school. Thanks,
-Dylan

Your issue sounds like the hard drive is failing or it was bumped or moved while it was operating and corrupted the data on the drive.
Hard to tell for sure, run through this list of fixes
Step by Step to fix your Mac
Note your signature says it's a 2009 model, that's almost 4 years old and near it's end of life stage of apx 4.5-5 years, a new drive might fix the machine, but clogged dust vents could be killing it too..
Out of AppleCare and warranty, looks like you might be doing it yourself.
Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
My computer is not working, is my personal data lost?
Install/upgrade RAM or storage drive in Mac's
How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6

Why does my Mac keep freezing with shortcuts in CS6?

Currently here's the situation
I'm on an OSX Lion machine (10.7.4) with 7GB of memory.
I have the following shortcuts in Illustrator:
Cmd +Shift + = : To export a file
Cmd +3 : Select the same fill color
Cmd + 4: Select the same stroke color
Cmd + . : Rotate
Cmd + , : Reflect an object
It doesn't matter which shortcut it is what will happen is that Illustrator and my Mac will freeze up not allowing me to force quit the program. This will happen randomly and the only way around it is to restart the mac and restore default preferences via Cmd + Option + Shift when opening the program.
I have tried re-installing the suite and it still happens, so I'm wondering is it the specific shortcuts I am using or is it the computer? I only ask because Illustrator has no issues when everything is defaulted, however when I add the shortcuts this issue will happen.
Thank you in advance.

Is it just these custom shortcuts that are crashing the machine, or any shortcut?
What did you do the the exisitng shorcuts, did you disabel them. (eg: CMD 3 is hide).
You may want to try using Fkeys instead for your custom shortcuts, you just want to check the :Usea ALL F1, F2, etc.

Why does my mac keep freezing?

My mac book pro is almost 2 years old and recently its started freezing every time I try and do a simple task. I open finder and it freezes or I open a new tab on chrome and it freezes it and it freezes up really bad when I'm sliding between desktops but basically I do anything and I have to wait a few minutes before it responds.
It doesn't have the spinning wheel the whole computer just doesn't repsond and I have no clue whats wrong with it so any help at all would be amazing.

raciemily,
try this: boot your MacBook Pro into Recovery mode by holding down a Command key and the R key as it starts up. Once the Mac OS X Utilities menu appears, select Disk Utility. On the left-hand side of the Disk Utility window, select your internal disk’s boot partition (typically called “Macintosh HD”). On the right-hand side, press the Verify Disk button if it’s not greyed out; if it is greyed out, or if it reports that errors were found, press the Repair Disk button. Once the verification/repair is completed, exit Disk Utility and select Restart from the Apple menu to restart in normal mode. Does it still freeze every time you try to do a simple task?

Why does my mac keeps freezing every time i go to settings?

I cannot use my settings icon because every time i do it just freezes(the colorful wheel appears and just stays for a very long period of time there until i decide to exit it). How can i fix this problem? i cannot use anything or change anything in my macbook pro.

By settings you mean system preferences?
It has a preference file or .plist that you need to delete.
In Lion Apple has decided to 'hide' the ~/Library folder where preferences are stored along with many other items you may want to access to fix or troubleshoot.
OS X Lion Where did my Library go
MacBook Pro
MacBook Pro Apple Support
Lion OS X Communities

Why does my Mac keep freezing up

Not sure if it is a Mac OS X (10.7.2) Can't find the numbers anywhere.
Anyway, it keeps locking up and I have to shut everything down and reboot.
Is there any way to fix this?

I had the exact same problem. For me, the workaround was to disable 'Allow Simultaneous Downloads' on the Downloads screen in iTunes. With only one item downloading at a time, I've had no problems at all.

Why does my mac keyboard not work properly and is to do with the extra RAM?

Like someone else who has posted on this forum I have a problem with my Apple Pro Keyboard (usb, white, english) The keyboard has developed a fault which has resulted in the tab, caps lock and some other keys near them refusing to work. The caps lock light illuminates at startup but thats about it.
I've run various checks, reset my logic board, unplugged all the cables I can and still nothing. I recently installed two 512mb memory things boosting the machine's memory to 1.5gb. I have since done a full zero install (which was after the fault occured) but the problem persisted.
Is the memory the cause of this issue or is it time to get a new keyboard? I tried to run the apple hardware cd that came with the machine but it refuses to show up on the desktop and I cannot boot from it.
Any help would be very VERY much appreciated.
Also...is there any way of contacting apple with this? The contact us section pretty much just points back to the support site which doesnt have a solution.

nope that doesnt seem to be it. The caps lock light comes on at startup..so it seems it has the capability to work.
the keys which dont work seem to be:
caps
tab
escape
the squiggly thing next to left shift
and the key next to one
thanks for the suggestion though

Why does my mac frequently freeze for several minutes at a time with rotating beach ball?

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