Spinning beach ball

[Gadolie]

I was wondering if anybody can tell me why sometimes the spinning beach ball spins and sometime the wristwatch spins. I wonder if when the ball spins, the system is under more stress. Sometimes I get no spins of any kind :confused:
Thank you

G5 1.8 dualie

[cluthz]

I was wondering if anybody can tell me why sometimes the spinning beach ball spins and sometime the wristwatch spins. I wonder if when the ball spins, the system is under more stress. Sometimes I get no spins of any kind :confused:
Thank you

G5 1.8 dualie

Wristwatch was back in the os 9 days, it has to be a program running in classic.
If the beachball often shows up, get more RAM..

[Abstract]

I don't know if I have ever seen the wristwatch, but the spinning beach ball means the computer is thinking. Not a big deal. I don't get the beach ball too often on my 1GHz 12" PB with 512MB or RAM, so if you do regularly on a G5, get more RAM. :)

And about your computer under greater "duress"........so? :confused:

[wrldwzrd89]

I was wondering if anybody can tell me why sometimes the spinning beach ball spins and sometime the wristwatch spins. I wonder if when the ball spins, the system is under more stress. Sometimes I get no spins of any kind :confused:
Thank you

G5 1.8 dualie
Hmm... I don't know why this happens, but I suspect the wristwatch appears when a Mac OS X application that can also run in the Classic environment (so-called "CFM Carbon" application) or a Classic application is busy. Other types of Mac OS X applications (that don't work in Classic - "Mach-O Carbon" and "Cocoa") will display the beach ball instead because they take full advantage of the Mac OS X frameworks. That's my best guess. As far as why you get no spins sometimes - it's because the application in question is either in the background or forgot to set the cursor status to "busy".

[JeDiBoYTJ]

I believe the spinning beach ball is in the OS itself. if you see an hourglass, it is more likely in that application only. because in OSX, the only "Busy" animation is the beachball one.

I dont think there is a difference. both signify the system as busy.

[Gadolie]

I have 1Gig of ram.
Here's something else. When I wake my mac, the ball spins in the blacked out portion of the log on screen, and remains there until I position the ball into the log on box. Then it turns into a pointer. Opening up any other applications such as itunes, garage band etc., nothing spins.
Opening Photoshop 7.0 will produce spinning ball for a couple of seconds. The wristwatch will blip when I'm moving around in Photoshop. Don't get me wrong, the G5 moves well between all applications. I was just wondering why a ball and a watch :)
Thanks for your input.

[yellow]

I'm pretty sure that wrldwzrd89 is right. Carbonized apps versus cocoa apps. You'll never see a wristwatch with Safari or other iApps. Only with carbonized apps.

[Sun Baked]

It's not always get more RAM, as the drive problems cascade there will be more of it showing up on the screen until you lose the ability to boot.

Which is why it may be a good idea to run fsck/DFA every now and then to see if there is a drive problem, especially if the machine seems to be hanging more often.

[yellow]

The beachball usually means that the WindowServer is hanging waiting for the app, the OS, or the hardware that isn't repsonding.

[Grokgod]

I have osx panther installed without Classic and sometimes i get the wristwatch!

Weird , i thought that the wristwatch was for classic only!

[Brize]

I'm pretty sure that wrldwzrd89 is right. Carbonized apps versus cocoa apps. You'll never see a wristwatch with Safari or other iApps. Only with carbonized apps.

I get the wristwatch whenever I add artwork to an album in iTunes and one of the tracks is playing. Now I'm beginning to wonder whether this represents unusual behaviour. :confused:

[bankshot]

From what I can tell, the wristwatch occurs in Carbon applications (not necessarily Classic). Open up large file in QuickTime Player. You'll probably see it.

Also I think yellow is correct in that the beachball merely signifies that an application has stopped responding to WindowServer. No more, no less. The actual cause could be just about anything - swapping to disk, waiting for other hardware, waiting for network data without updating the window, running a tight code loop that doesn't check in with WindowServer, hang, crash, etc.

[yellow]

I have osx panther installed without Classic and sometimes i get the wristwatch!

As bankshot said, the wristwatch is from a carbonized app, it's got nothing to do with Classic.

I get the wristwatch whenever I add artwork to an album in iTunes and one of the tracks is playing. Now I'm beginning to wonder whether this represents unusual behaviour

Yes, well, I may have mislead you there.. You may, or may not, remember that iTunes was an app that originally came into being in OS9, so it could be a carbonized app. Though by now I would fully have expected iTunes to be full Coccoa.

[Brize]

Yes, well, I may have mislead you there.. You may, or may not, remember that iTunes was an app that originally came into being in OS9, so it could be a carbonized app. Though by now I would fully have expected iTunes to be full Coccoa.

Yep, that makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.

[Grokgod]

I did an erase and full reinstall and all the beach balls went away! :p

[astraeadesign]

I have a 2.0gig dual processor G5 with 8gb of RAM, and 20 inch Cinema Display running 10.3.5. No matter what I am doing, I frequently get the spinning beachball. I can be in the Finder moving files, clicking open a drive, etc. or in Freehand MX, Word, Photoshop, etc. and the ball shows up for anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute and a half. I have replaced my RAM, repaired permissions, optimized drive, bought a faster boot drive, and even reinstalled everything fresh. Anyone have any thoughts? Thanks in advance to anyone that can help.

[BornAgainMac]

Could it be network related? I found that if I turn off a machine that I have a network mount then the finder shows the beach ball until eventually I receive a message that the shared drive is no longer mounted. The request reminds me of the "Abort, Retry, Fail" message from DOS and the behavior is similiar also with the delay.

There may be other similiar situations that cause the beach ball like the one above. The finder doesn't seem to be multi-threaded. I had always thought permissions and memory were the main reasons but it sounds like it could be other reasons. Perhaps the console window will provide some clues.