Fresh OSX install, beach balls

[urbanmojo]

Working on a friends computer. Here is what happened. (5 years old hardware). The problem is now a Snow Leopard Issue, but no forum for that.

1. They upgraded from Mavericks to Yosemite. Problems with iPhoto not updating the library. Said he upgraded over a slow internet connection so things didn't complete.
2. Noticed there were lots of beach balls and weird behaviour. Got disk errors in disk utility. Couldn't repair them when booting to Disk Utility, said to back up and reformat.
3. Did a fresh install of Snow Leopard because he has the disk. Erased the disk first, choosing the zero Security option first. Then installed
4. With a fresh install of Snow Leopard getting spinning balls all the time. Fresh install, no apps running. Can appear at any time, before entering admin password, in Finder.
5. Upgraded to 10.6.8 using Software Update. Issue persists. Tried repairing disk permissions, repairing disk. Still having problems.
5. Booted to safe mode. No beach balls. This suggests it is not a physical disk error, but a software issue. But no new software. No startup items. Ran http://www.volitans-software.com/smart_utility.php to check for disk issues anyway. Says a o.k.

What can I check for now? Should I try to upgrade to Yosemite again? Any way to determine what is hanging things up?

Thanks,

 

[urbanmojo]

I should note that there is plenty of disk space (like 490 GB free out of a 500 GB disk). There is plenty of free RAM and I have also run a memtest and it comes out o.k. (but again safe mode works o.k so doubtful it is memory or disk errors, from what I have read anyway)



Generally I get the beach ball when I haven't touched it in a while and I click on something. Happens in Finder, Safari, logon dialogs.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Could be RAM gone bad.

 

[Buggyflayer]

Try a USB HDD, format it to HFS Journaled & instal 10.6 on it then upgrade as necessary to a version your own Mac can use.
Test it on yours to give you a feel of the inevitable delay then try it on the other machine.
Don't bother with a USB stick as that can drive you crazy, you need a normal HDD.
I use an ancient 30GB 4200rpm IDE from a dead Powerbook for this, USB IDE SATA cable adapters are readily available for little money. If you use a Laptop drive the USB +5V is usually enough so you don't need an external PSU as you would for utilising a 3.5" HDD.

 

[urbanmojo]

I'll answer my own question here. After doing an Apple Hardware Test (Extended) that came back o.k., I reset the PRAM (google it for those reading who don't know) and that seems to have fixed the performance issues. I'll will post again if the problem reappears.