Mac Dual 2 GHz PPC G5 osx 10.5.8 Slow Spinning Ball

I don't know exactly why it would be doing that. Could you post a screenshot of Activity Monitor and let us know how much RAM you have? You can take the screenshot using Grab (in the Applications/Utilities folder). To upload to Macrumors, open the image in Preview, hit File>Save As, and save it as a PNG file (portable network graphic). On Macrumors, when you are posting, hit manage attachments, and select the PNG file to upload.

I understand that you are using Safari. That is not recommended. The version for Leopard is now slow and outdated. For a browser, I would recommend Leopard Webkit, Aurorafox, Tenfourfox, or Camino. You can find processor optimized builds of Camino here. All of the other browsers I mentioned have optimized builds on their webpages. There are other browsers to look at as well, see the FAQ for PowerPC Macs at the top of this forum.

Check system.log in Console. It could be dying HDD, especially if BBOD does appear when you're starting to run out of RAM.

TexasBear said:

Yes, I know I am running an older Mac, but it should be faster? The Mac Dual Processor 2 GHz G5, wiht OSX 10.5.8 shows not to be out of processor power, disk IO, memory, or any other resource, but often I get the Spinning Beach Ball of Death. It is usually when I am in Safari, or Word. I usually have Safari, Work, Mail and possibly a few other applications open. The monitor shows no resources fully used, but the beach ball just spins and the Monitor shows some application is Not Responding. Usually if I shut down and start up again it will clear up for a while, but not long. Any suggestion will be appreciated. One suggestion I have had it to kill mac spindump.

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I agree with 666sheep, for some reason dying hard drives on G5 PM's are difficult to diagnose because their symptoms are so across the board.

I never run a Mac without getting a new hard drive. Hope you have back up.

I also agree with 666sheep. A sluggish once responsive system with no increase of usage or low system resources is often a sign of a failing hard drive.

You'll see something produced by kernel. It'll say something like this: Error Disk I/O to disk /dev/disk0.