Damn Spinning Ball

[MagickMuffin]

I have been experiencing more often the spinning ball syndrome and it is cramping my work-flow.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to why this is happening?
Could my hard drive be going bad?
Is there anything I can do about it?

I use my laptop every day and sometimes for heavy graphic work, photoshop, final cut pro, comic life...
Because of my type of activities I don't like wasting my time waiting for the ball to stop spinning, and usually I can't do anything until it stops....

If someone could offer a solution I would be most appreciative!

[reprobate]

1. try unlockupd. worked for me.

URL: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19412

[MagickMuffin]

2. Thanks for your help!

However, I tried it didn't seem to help, on another forum (Apple Matters) someone suggested Speed Freak. I tried that as well and was having somewhat of a better success, but still the spinning ball of death keeps spinning on after a while. I contacted one of the programs where this happens the most, they wrote back to suggest tracking with activity monitor : :grr: :banghead:

Anyway just to give you an update and to let you know that I appreciate your input.

[rusty charly]

5. there's also

AppleJack which does a nice cleaning/tune up

AppleJack is a tool to make it easy to troubleshoot your Mac when no other startup disk is available to you. The script gives you an interactive menu-driven environment for basic disk check/repair, permissions repair, .plist validation, cache cleanup, and swap file removal. You can do basic system maintenance even if your GUI won't start up at all, simply by booting into single user mode, and typing 'applejack'.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19596

(read carefully how to run it. you must be in single user mode (at restart: hold down the "apple" key + S)

[Richard Steele]

8. Hey, rusty charley, thanks for recommending AppleJack!

I just downloaded and used it- worked great!

[rusty charly]

9. it totally re-set

my laptop

amazing little app

[Richard Steele]

10. AMAZING is the word! ( Because I was honestly AMAZED!)

No reason to bore you with all the details,
but it fixed some problems that a five-star, $$$ "disk utility"
couldn't even SEE!

20 minutes after I clicked 'download' I was an AppleJack fan!

I am going to take some time tomorrow to research
the AppleJack programmer/s, to see what else he/she/they
have put out.
Whatever it might be, I feel sure it is well worth having.

[MalachiConstant]

11. is that "disk utility"

that you are referring to Disk Warrior? I was debating on getting it. I'm a wee bit paranoid after my g4 powerbook HD crashed about six months ago.
i did learn from it that in single user mode typing "fsck -yf" will do a pretty throrough check up on your HD.

[Richard Steele]

12. I really don't want to mention its name...

Because ANY utility which fixes ANY problem will have rabid fans;
just like I am now a rabid fan of AppleJack.

And I am not saying it is a bad app, it just didn't happen to fix
my particular problem.
It has Million$ in sales, so I know darn well that LOTS of folks
have bought it and been very happy with its work.

And if I mention it by name, that would just start a WWW-dot-flaming-mess of
hate and discontent.

Like if my DOCTOR didn't figure out what was wrong with me,
and I needed to go to a specialist for a second opinion,
that doesn't mean he is a bad DOCTOR,
and it doesn't mean that his DOCTORing isn't great the other 99% of the time.

KnowhutImean?

[Elwood P Dowd]

13. I was going to send DW my $39.95 next week

for an upgrade CD from OS 9.1. This will be about the 3d or 4th time since back in the 90s. DW has saved my ass a couple of times, but if I could save that cash and put it on more RAM, I would be a happy camper. What would you do?

[MalachiConstant]

14. if you're system is running fine,

but you think the performance could be enhanced with more RAM, then i would have to take the RAM, personally. it sounds like there are alternatives out there, this applejack being one.

but, hey, it's your call.

[rusty charly]

3. wow

did it. fixed a problem i didn't really know i had. supper fast now. like new. thanks.

[reprobate]

4. You are welcome.

[Omphaloskepsis]

6. How much RAM do you have?

[alfredo]

7. Here's some other ways of speeding up your Mac. Turn off the

Genie Effect, use a solid color desktop, In System Preferences/Appearance change the Appearance to Graphite. Don't let a bunch of icons clutter your desktop. Lots of RAM.

Run utilities like suggested. I like Mac Janitor and OnyX.app.

[MagickMuffin]

15. Thanks everybody

Well, I took my laptop into the Apple Bar, and they sent it off for repairs.

It was then determined I had a bad drive and apparently the new ram I had installed wasn't compatible:shrug:

But I got it back and it has working out quite nicely.

I appreciate everyone who gave me suggestions. I will keep this link so I can always refer back just in case.:grouphug: