Firefox pinwheel/"not responding" too often on 2012 Mac Mini i7

[MrXiro]

I don't know what the deal is but my 2012 2.3Ghz Mac Mini seems to constantly choke on Firefox. I'm not sure if it's Firefox or if there is an issue with the computer. I just opened Firefox from a fresh restart and within 2 clicks it was pinwheeling. It lasts anywhere from 10sec to 40sec at times.

Anyone have a fix? I've googled and searched these forums. I've upgraded my RAM today to 16gb of Crucial RAM and it didn't help, previously I was using 1333Mhz 8gb Crucial RAM that I pulled from my 2011 iMac, thinking maybe I just needed more RAM, I do a bit of video work and often convert using Handbrake.

I've also put and SSD in the Mac Mini Crucial M4 256gb.

Any advice would be helpful.

[MrXiro]

Any help please?

[philipma1957]

is it only on firefox?
is chrome good or safari ?
what is hooked up to your mini? usb2 or usb3 printers etc?
do you have it hardwired to the net or wireless?

[MrXiro]

Originally Posted by philipma1957

is it only on firefox?
is chrome good or safari ?
what is hooked up to your mini? usb2 or usb3 printers etc?
do you have it hardwired to the net or wireless?

Chrome seems to be fine but I only hop onto Chrome when I'm having an issue with Firefox, don't use safari much but it seemed fine also.
Only an external hard drive hooked up to Mac Mini now, one is full of movies the other is misc back up data.
It's set up wirelessly an an airport extreme/airport express extender combo.

The pinwheeling is very sporadic. It can occur in an instant as simple as switching tabs or clicking on a link. I can't seem to find a rhyme or reason to why it pinwheels. I leave Activity Monitor open to see what's going on and there is a huge cpu spike every time but none of the tasks take up anything crazy at the moment. And Firefox always turns red and says "not responding" within the Activity Monitor.

[MrXiro]

Hmm... I'm wondering if it's because of the constant Spotlight updating that's causing the slow downs...

[philipma1957]

disconnect the external and run firefox see if it spins the beachball.

[scottsjack]

Originally Posted by philipma1957

disconnect the external and run firefox see if it spins the beachball.

Same thing happened to me last night but Spotlight on an external boot drive started indexing an internal drive.

[philipma1957]

osx 10.5 osx 10.6 had this happen .

patches fixed it.

[MrXiro]

Originally Posted by philipma1957

osx 10.5 osx 10.6 had this happen .

patches fixed it.

Which problem? The Spotlight issue or Firefox blowing up my CPU?

[philipma1957]

Originally Posted by MrXiro

Which problem? The Spotlight issue or Firefox blowing up my CPU?

BOTH. I did manage to get at the time safari not firefox (same symptom) to work by avoiding all usb2 hook ups and not uploading photos to sites like this one. This was with 10.6.1 ? I think. It would spotlite my tm and crash when uploading to this site and to parts-express

[MrXiro]

Originally Posted by philipma1957

BOTH. I did manage to get at the time safari not firefox (same symptom) to work by avoiding all usb2 hook ups and not uploading photos to sites like this one. This was with 10.6.1 ? I think. It would spotlite my tm and crash when uploading to this site and to parts-express

Weird... I'll try unplugging it when I get home. I should probably just reload all my movies back to my 1TB internal HDD then.

Thanks!