IMac :: Sometimes Unresponsive - Busy Beachball Popping Up
Sep 13, 2010
Our 1.5 year old iMac (20" iMac, 2.4GHz Core 2 duo, otherwise known as "iMac 8.1") has started to act really strange: the busy "beachball" popping up all the time, things lagging behind or being very unresponsive (e.g. I might access an application's menu or press a window button and won't get any response until a minute later). Booting is also an issue: often times the white screen which appears with the startup chime stays there forever with that spinning circle. Other times all seems well and the Finder desktop with the dock appears, but the Finder menu bar never shows up (or appears 20 minutes later!). I've also had instances when a large folder icon with a question mark on it appears right after the startup chime (I take it this means that a bootable drive isn't found or isn't working).
Strangely there are instances when everything works as it should. But something is obviously wrong with it. So what else have I tried in order to rectify or indicate where the problem lies:
- reinstalled MacOSX from the DVD while keeping the user data
- reinstalled MacOSX from the DVD, completely erasing the internal hard drive first (I've back up my user files on an external Time Machine hard drive)
- run "Apple hardware test" from the MacOSX installation DVD. No indications of damaged RAM.
- removed the 4GB memory upgrade (two 2GB DIMMs) and replaced it with the 1GB DIMM that came with the iMac when we bought it
- ran "Disk utility", checking the drive for errors, SMART status and permission issues
- booted into Safe mode (CMD-S while booting), then entering: applejack AUTO restart to do a deep fix/check of the drive
- done several PRAM resets (CMD-ALT-P-R while booting up, a couple of times after each other, repeating the startup chime)
I have both Safari and Firefox browsers. I prefer Firefox, but for downloading stuff I use Safari, but my question is, Why does the spinning beach ball of death keeps on popping up throughout the whole time I use Safari? Does this happen to all of you?
When I start or wake up my imac g5 (Tiger) and open safari the system seems to hang for about a minute or so (beachball when curson is on desktop, but app names show when cursor is over the dock). Does not happen when I start other applications first, but even these stop when I start safari immediately after. System runs normally once safari is running. Permissions repair and other usual maintenance task performed (I use onyx), but problem persists.
My parents iMac is getting the beachball after about 5 minutes online on any browser (AOL, Safari, and Firefox) but every other Mac in the house is loading fine. The iMac is on Snow Leopard and was bought in July of 2008.
I have an iMac (20" 2.4 g, 3 gig ram, os 10.5.6) that has recently stopped waking up after a long night of sleep. I have also found that the mouse and keyboard become unresponsive if the mac does wake up. The mouse has power, but the keyboard does not show any sign of life. The mouse glows red, but when I hit caps-lock, the little green light doesn't come on. I have tried switching ports, but no dice. As I said, the USB port clearly is sending power to the mouse, but not accepting any input. When I restart, all is well on most occassions, but the problem has persisted, once or twice, after a re-boot.
I have been experiencing some unusual problems with my imac. While on the internet today my computer crashed on me twice, the first time the screen just showed a bunch of vertical lines, the second it flashed some random colors then went black. After the screen change the computer was unresponsive. I have a bad feeling, is it due to overheating, a bad logic board or something else. This is the first time I have ever experienced this on a mac. Has anyone had any simiar issues? Or am I up **** creek? I can't really afford a new computer seeing that I just bought an iPad (it comes Saturday). I am not sure if my computer is still under apple care and even if it was I won't get it back by the time I have to go back to college. I attached a screen shot of my computer temps.
I have yet to buy external speakers for my intel IMac, however, I am noticing more and more a very annoying "crackling or popping" every so often... random "crack/pop"... what is going on? The machine is still under warranty if this is a serious problem... but boy it really is annoying when it happens.
When ever I start up my computer there are like a 100 or so windows that open up... They are all "my computer" The same folder opens like 100 or so times.. They are all in the finder.. I can Hide them but how do I delete these so they don't show up everytime
Everytime I open Safari i get a ton of messages Telling me to reset my Keychain to many diffrent things and I was just wondering how to stop that from popping up.
I was reluctant to update my 27inch i5 iMac with the new graphics card firmware update since I wasn't having any flickering issues. I finally caved in and did it thinking that nothing bad will happen, well of course something did. Ever since I updated it yesterday my computer makes a distinct and random popping sound from the speakers, it is soft but audible in my quiet room when I am working and it is driving me crazy.
I have noticed more and more unwanted ads popping up from time to time, I can't hardly do anything! As soon as I start a search on Safari all these ads start coming.
I wonder if the audio problems on the Mac Pro affect all Macs? My MBP shows coreaudiod pegged at 6.9% when I'm completely idle, and of course not emitting any audio.
I'm trying to restore an old Hard Drive image OS.dmg to a usb hard drive that I have. I'm using the command: dd if=/Users/Shared/OS.dmg of=/dev/disk5 bs=1m. And I'm getting, dd: /dev/disk5: Resource busy. What would cause this error? I'm not sure why it's "busy". I get the exact same thing when I try to do it in Disk Utility.
i'm in my second semester as a college freshman and my life is packed with so many things to do, places to go, assignments to turn in, dates to remember, etc. I'm also a very forgetful person.
What is the best calendar application (paid or nonpaid, doesn't matter as long as it helps me out) for the mac?
I have this problem with my mac and I will start by saying I have all Updates on my Imac 24" alum.
This problem started a few days ago. This install is 16months old and running with no problems until now.
in the morning I wake up to a blank screen (normal) however it will not wake up from sleep I have to do a hard reset. If I put the computer into sleep it will wake up when I want it to. So I think it is when its been idle for a few hours or more.
also I noticed that the Menu bar time is frozen and when I move the mouse over the icon I get a busy Icon. I've tried to run Activity monitor, or disk utility while the menu bar is frozen but they are unresponsive and will not load
I turned off sleep last night and woke up to the mac working ok, but I still have the menu bar problems.
I have let it run 24 hours and still would not restart. The only way i can shut it off is holding down power button. Its a pain to have to do this any time the imac needs to restart. The screen just shows the swirling wait circle and nothing ever happens.
I keep getting this message when attempting ton restore my Samsung SSD on my 2012 MBP. I've got a .dmg image its all my data on it and I'm just trying to get it from my external hardrive to my internal 3rd party SSD.
Info: MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), Samsung SSD 850 Pro w/ 2 OWC 4GBram
I tried installing my fujistu printer through IP address, which was successful. I tied printing the first time through textedit and it worked perfectly. Now when I try printing again through either textedt or another program all I get is this message: "Network host 'XXX.XXX.X.XXX' is busy; will retry in 5 seconds". The amount of time keeps increasing.
Howdy all. I just inherited my first Mac, a 500 MHz dual boot ibook. I have put a legal (from a friend who no longer has it installed) copy of OSX 10.4 on it, but when I try to send the registration it says Apple is busy/or I couldn't connect to the internet. I am connected via a LAN and can browse and the like. I try to register by connecting via a modem and it connects, talks with Apple, thinks, and then says Apples is busy/or I couldn't connect to the internet. Am I doing something wrong? The machine is working fine, but I think I can't get updates until I register?
2 yr old Macbook Pro boots up to the point where wallpaper appears - then its solid spinning. I've tied restarting a number of time same thing. I really don't have time for this.
I recently bought my Macbook Pro and have been absolutely loving it. Yesterday I ripped some of my dvd's using mac the ripper onto my computer. For some reason when I attempt to open "shutter island" under file>open dvd media, the movie will stutter at the beginning and then play. The only problem is the dvd player will lock up and i will get the spinning beachball any time I move the cursor over the application, remote control for it, or the menu bar at the top of the screen. Because of this I am not able to put the movie in full screen, minimize it, pause it, fast forward it, etc. I dont know if it makes much of a difference, but the app version is 5.3.
Like the title says since Snow Leopard when I go to websites with a flash video player built in it beachballs my internet browser endlessly until I force quit. It is very frustrating. I have reinstalled flash player many times. Youtube works fine, but Hulu is impossible to watch. This makes a good portion of websites I visit not even functional.
i have just installed a new hard drive and since i have done this, i keep getting a spinning beachball, which sometimes doesn't go off and i have to manually switch off the computer, and i know this cant be good for the hard drive. i am running tiger 10.4 on a powermac g4.
The last several times I tried to quit everything, preparing for a shutdown or reboot, Safari has gone into a tailspin and I had to force-quit it. Any ideas?
