beach ball

beach ball

by lance.scs Apr 24, 2009 12:40PM PDT

I have a new MacBook Pro 2.8 Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB memory, OSX 10.5.6 and I am experiencing a nasty behaviour:
Every so often I get "the beach ball" and the machine stops working. I can't do anything because it is all frozen. It seems that the machine is doing something which is very important and whatever it is, the priority overrules anything else. It is annoying because it may take up to 1 minute (!!) before it resumes its normal functions.
Does any one have an idea what this is and what can be done to stop this?

Discussion is locked

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Beach Ball

by jedirock Apr 24, 2009 2:37PM PDT

Sounds like your machine is running out of RAM, and so has to go to the internal hard drive for more space, known as swap space. What applications do you have running when this happens?

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out of ram?

by lance.scs Apr 24, 2009 2:48PM PDT

Hi, thanks for the reply.
I have 4 GB of ram and the running apps are Text edit and/or MS Word or Excel.
I don't keep many apps running.
Still the problem is there...

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I had the same problem a while ago

by mrmacfixit Forum moderator Apr 24, 2009 11:15PM PDT

which was caused by an app trying to "phone home" to the total exclusion of everything else.

I finally found the problem by using Little Snitch which monitors outgoing traffic from your Mac and, based on rules that you create, either allows the traffic or not.

There is a free trial period.

Worth a try

Peter

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Out of RAM?

by jedirock Apr 25, 2009 5:12AM PDT

Yes, you have 4GB. And I've exhausted 8GB to the point the machine goes to swap. Your point?

Try mrmacfixit's post though. It is possible something's becoming stuck on a network transfer. I've never heard of Little Snitch before, but it might work.

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(NT) Check it out

by mrmacfixit Forum moderator Apr 25, 2009 6:46AM PDT

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BeachBall

by Jkirk3279 Apr 27, 2009 10:32AM PDT

When a Mac is brand new, it has to index the hard drive in the background.

This ties up system resources and can cause slowdowns until the indexing finishes.

If it's still doing that after another week you could have another problem.

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Try Applejack @ SourceForge.net - It's free

by dcgeneral May 4, 2009 3:19AM PDT

Applejack is the very best app for Mac troubleshooting and it's free. You can get it at versiontracker.com or at SourceForge.net. It will keep your Mac running trouble free. Don't forget to zap the PRAM every once in awahile: Press p and r and option and command simultaneously at boot before the OS boots up. Let it chime at least 3 times. I let mine go about 6 times, release and the boot resumes to the active HD.

Best app for a simple, reliable and bootable backup is SuperDuper @ shirtpocket.com (not free, but well worth the money). If you need archival backups, Time Machine is OK, but SuperDuper actually does a super job if all you need are full HD personal backups.

Apple also has a support forum at their website. I go there occasionally. Leopard has had a batch of troubles, but the latest update 10.5.6 has erased many bugs. They really released it too soon but if you complain too much, they will delete a rant even if they deserve one. I've owned Macs since 1997 and while there is no question Macs are superior to Microsoft pcs, as a company, they are very grumpy about any criticism no matter how mild. They don't call their support people "geniuses" for no reason.

Good luck. Hope this helps.

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