Unexplained beachballs

[Powerbook G5]

For some reason, starting last night, I am getting beachballs like crazy. At random times, I get a beachball in Finder, I get a beachball every time I click "open" in Photoshop, and I get a beachball whenever I open activity monitor. They last until I force restart my computer and whenever I do command+option+escape to force quit, these programs never quit so I am literally forced to restart. I have never experienced beachballs in OS X before and I cannot figure out what is causing it now. The only thing I have done recently that would change my system at all was installing the new iCal update, but besides that, nothing else is different. I am running OS 10.3.2, any ideas? I did a permissions repair but there was nothing wrong and I am not sure what else it could be.

[wrldwzrd89]

I don't know why, but having a local copy of your iDisk automatically synchronized can cause this problem. I had a similar issue when I had my iDisk cached locally; many times, when I tried to use the Open dialog in a program, my Mac would beachball for a good 3-5 minutes before becoming responsive again.

[sinisterdesign]

not sure it's related, but after installing 10.3.2 i had a beachball right after the computer should have finished booting. all the icons were on the desktop & it's normally ready to go, but after that update it seemed like a long time before i could actually start doing anything.

then i started having the 'black box of death' appear every time i woke it up from sleep. so, spent a good part of this weekend wiping the hard drive & reinstalling 10.3 (NOT ".2") i'll wait until .3 comes out before i "update" anything again...

[Powerbook G5]

Thanks for the responses, I figured out what it was that same day, actually. My school's T1 network is really ****ty and becomes unresponsive and goes down often. I found that this always coincided with the beachballs and found that when I have certain things running, such as iDisk syncing, Mail, etc, which rely on having the connection being reliable, it will cause the system to hang while the signal is trying to come back.

[ratspg]

I get terrible beachballs at school too, especially a prolonged boot-up time JUST because of the internet lag, i never understood why!? But glad u figured out why

[abhishekit]

Originally posted by Powerbook G5
Thanks for the responses, I figured out what it was that same day, actually. My school's T1 network is really ****ty and becomes unresponsive and goes down often. I found that this always coincided with the beachballs and found that when I have certain things running, such as iDisk syncing, Mail, etc, which rely on having the connection being reliable, it will cause the system to hang while the signal is trying to come back.
hmm..that explains somethin...I occasionally barge into my neighbours network which is very slow because of low signal..and yesterday was such an occasion..n i was copying some songs from her hard drive(:mad: yah I am dirty and shez a bitch..but thats a long story )and I got the beachball......couldnt force quit...and when i relaunched finder..every thing on the desktop disappeared..and had to finally restart