Constant spinning wheel of death!

[mobkon2]

When I start up my iMac, it runs ok for a good 3-4 minutes, then all of a sudden when I try to click somewhere, I get the spinning wheel of death for about 2-3 minutes. Then when I click somewhere else I get another spinning wheel of death for another few minutes. This goes on and on and the computer is basically unusable, unless I want to wait 30 minutes to complete easy tasks that should take 2 minutes.

Any idea what could be causing this problem? I tried resetting the ram by holding apple-option-P-R while restarting, but nothing is working. I have a good 15% free on my hard drive.

help! this is driving me insane. Thanks in advance!

 

[ScoobyMcDoo]

OK, Here are some of the usual questions you need to answer:

What version of OS X and have up gotten all the updates
Have you repaired permissions?
Installed any after-market RAM or other parts?
What specifically are you doing when this happens.

 

[mobkon2]

OK, Here are some of the usual questions you need to answer:

What version of OS X and have up gotten all the updates
Have you repaired permissions?
Installed any after-market RAM or other parts?
What specifically are you doing when this happens.

Running OSX 10.4.11 and yes I beleive ive gotten all the updates, ill have to double check.
No I have not repaired permissions.
No aftermarket RAM or other parts.
It happens when I do anything, just normal computer use. It will act fine when I boot up for a few minutes, then maybe lets say when I go to select the FILE to open something, the spinning wheel comes up. Or, it will happen when I try to close a webpage, or it will happen when I click to open a folder on my desktop. Its doesnt happen with one specific thing or within one specific program. It just gets to the point where it happens every time I try to do something. Then once its stopped spinning, it will happen when I try to do my next action. No strange noises coming from the hard drive either. thanks alot!

 

[mobkon2]

I just tried to create a new user to see if that would solve anything, and its no different. Does this seem like a ram issue? I tried to verify my hard drive and it gave me a couple errors, but the Repair button was greyed ou. I also wasnt able to Repair the drive either when running the Disk Utils on the Mac OSX install disc. Both times the button was greyed out.

hmmm.

 

[Amdahl]

I would try booting in Safe-mode and see if the problem is still there. (Hold Shift at the Apple logo/chimes)

Also try adding a new user account. If it doesn't affect the new user account, then it is corrupt preferences or an add-on software that is not working correctly.

If it happens in a new user account, and/or in safe mode, you might have hardware problem or a corrupted hard disk, or OS install.

Constant beachballs like this is something that I saw when I had a dodgy firewire cable to my external boot drive. It resulted in corruption to the file system, and I had to completely format the drive (not just archive&install) to get it working right.

EDIT: I see you mention hard disk problems as I was typing this message; boot the OS X DVD and run Disk Utility from there. It will let you repair. HOWEVER, when I had a similar issue, Disk Utility could not truly fix it. Reformat was the only cure. Repair might work for you though, certainly give it a try.

 

[RedRaider89]

Did you ever get your problem fixed??

Mobkon2,

Did you ever get your problem fixed, I, too have noticed the problem with the spinning pizza wheel of death running for between 30 seconds to 5 minutes or more (I usually give up and hardstart by that point). I have had this problem frequently on my MacBook Pro and iMac both. Both are intel-based and running Snow Leopard.

Please let me know if you figured out a solution, as I would like to try whatever worked for you.