Hourly 'beachball' issue

[mrrippey]

Have my 13" uMBP for a week and love it. Upgraded to 4BG RAM and 250HDD.

Seems like every hour or so, I get a beach ball and everything stops, iTunes, Entourage, browser. I am thinking there is some indexing going on (Spotlight) but I have no clue.

Is anyone else experiencing this and if so, what to do about it. It is kinda driving me crazy.

 

[sammich]

Do you have Time Machine set to back up? How long does it last? TM shouldn't be causing this really.

But in any case, open Activity Monitor (Applications -> Utilities), and try to bring it to the front when the beachball-ing occurs.

 

[rdowns]

Open up console.app and see if you can find what's going on.

 

[mrrippey]

I have both console and activity monitor open so I will see what it going on in about 45 minutes.

I am thinking it is spotlight or something, TM is not even configured so I know it is not that.

 

[RealEvil]

Did you install firmware 1.7? If so check the thread about the potential issues that brings.

 

[gario1]

I've had this problem on my MBP13 as well. After about 30 minutes of use I get the beachball issure about once every 2 minutes.. very frustrating and completly destorys any workflow that I may have going on.

I don't remember if it was happening pre EFI update, it seems like it may have started just before it.

 

[daver.cl]

try resetting your PRAM (cmd+option+p+r at boot, wait for the second chime and release)

if it's the 1.7 firmware update, doing this should address your problem.

 

[Nykwil]

hmm i have this issue as well sometimes. I thought it was firefox.

for the record i did install a 500gb western digital HD before the firmware upgrade and I've only been experiencing this after the firmware update

I have also already reset my PRAM

 

[Paix247]

I have this issue as well. New 2.53GHz 15". I also installed a new 500GB 7200RPM drive right before installing the new firmware.

Also of note, my Geekbench score is consistantly 20-30 points slower using the new larger, faster hard drive than it was using the stock drive. This could be due to the fact my drive was mostly empty when I was using the stock drive, and now I am half full. However, I still have 255 free... so this shouldn't really be the case. Odd...

 

[spaceboots06]

Same issue. I upgraded to 1.7 and didn't have the problem before. Mine lasts for about 30 seconds though. I sometimes get the software update icon too (I think that's it) with the circle divided into fourths with a blue / light blue color scheme...

 

[suekitch]

I was getting this on the same machine. It seems that resetting the PRAM as mentioned further above sorted it for me, so I hope it helps you guys out too

I was getting the problem every few minutes and the beachball/pinwheel would stay up for 30-60 seconds. Mainly happening with Safari though I was having issues with GarageBand last night; made me think that maybe my 2GB wasn't as useful as I'd hoped.

I've never done the PRAM thing before, being a relative Mac newbie, so I was a bit wary, but yeah, no worries!!

 

[mrrippey]

i reset the PRAM and monitoring if it happens again..

 

[macDonalds]

Do you have an external hard drive hooked up? I had the same issue.

 

[mrrippey]

no external hard drive connected. Zapped PRAM and it has not happened since. Still keeping an eye on it however. Happens when I am running iTunes mostly, not running it now however.