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Lately MAC colour wheel is always popping up

N

nomadix

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 3, 2006
111
0
Howdy Folks:

Cant remember exactly what test I ran when I called tech support/with tech help

when I am running Safari - the Colour wheel / cursor pops up and my system just slows down or interupts

Tech support had me put in one of my discs- cant remember which
Just put in hardware test and ran - no problems that I can see

but this was not what I ran with Tech support - something about video ......
any of this sound familiar

Thanks in advance

Glad New Year to all
Cheers
 
That's pretty broad so maybe we should start with the basics. What is your system and what are its specs? What changes did you make to it before getting this behaviour? Create a new user account and see if you get the same problems there. Also, open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder and verify your hard disk (not permissions). Does it come back with any errors? :)
 
Howdy Mad Jew:

thanks for the assistance

iMAC G5 1.8GHz 512 MB DDR SDRAM

I download a bunch of video files from YOUTUBE- since this activity - I get the colour wheel during all Safari activity- have even emptied my cache a few times

Nothing new - I do recall when I called for tech support the test was done on Video Bits - sound familiar

Cheers thanks again for you time and efforts
Glad New Year

cheers
 
I would recommend putting your RAM up to 1GB. 512MB really is the lowest amount of memory you can have if you want to run OS X 10.4, and in my experience being at the lowest possible end is generally not a good thing.
 
Howdy Jacksteruk309:

How would I go about increasing the RAM ( or is it Ram )

Am running OS x 10.3.9

Cheers thanks

Glad New Year
 
nomadix said:
Howdy Jacksteruk309:

How would I go about increasing the RAM ( or is it Ram )

Am running OS x 10.3.9

Cheers thanks

Glad New Year
Click to expand...
not to be terse, but you have to go buy it. Increasing RAM is not a switch you get to turn on, unfortunately.
 
Howdy :

Ok right on- So I will have to buy more RAM- as I have a G5 iMac and G4 PowerBook - RAM is something I will have to buy for individual machines- no?

Will I be able to install myself or will I have to take in and have installed?

Glad New Year

Cheers thanks alot
 
nomadix said:
Howdy :

Ok right on- So I will have to buy more RAM- as I have a G5 iMac and G4 PowerBook - RAM is something I will have to buy for individual machines- no?

Will I be able to install myself or will I have to take in and have installed?

Glad New Year

Cheers thanks alot
Click to expand...

okay lets see if i can help out a bit here.

so you're mainly seeing slowdowns and the spinning beachball in Safari? if so give a different browser a try. www.caminobrowser.org has Camino, my personal favorite. but there are many including another popular one, Firefox.

another thing is that increased RAM will help your system no matter what.
RAM is user installable and is quite easy on both PowerBooks and iMac G5s. i have done both and it takes 10 minutes. seriously.

online dealers like Data Memory Systems are great. they have RAM that will be guaranteed to work with your machines and finding the right kind is simple. you just follow their selection tool. the best ones to get are the ones that have lifetime warranties just in case. in order to install the RAM in your PowerBook you'll have to turn it off. flip it upside down and open a little door with four screws. and add in the new stick. For the iMac you'll turn it off and lay it on its face. unscrew the screws at the bottom vent (which would normally face the desk surface) and pop the back off. insert sticks and close. simple as that. honestly.

if you have any other questions just ask, thats what we're here for. :D
 
Howdy PlaceofDi's:

I know Mozilla as that is what I switched to when I was PC -

as for the other recommendation - for the increase of RAM - as I have 512 now and want to increase to 1G I should buy another 512 yes - as they have listed:: DM50 611 x 2 /512MB Kit 2 x 256MB DDR PC3200 400MHz (Non ECC) 32x64 CL3 2.6v 184 Pin DIMMs (Lifetime Warranty)

Or do I purchase the 1Gb

Thanks for taking my hand as it were...

Glad New Year

Cheers
 
Howdy PlaceofDi's

One more thing :

Just downloaded Camino- SHINY - I dig

Can I import all my bookmarks from Safari here?

Glad New Year

Cheers thanks ya
 
Howdy Again:

Just figured it out

Much better than Safari

cheers ya

Glad New Year
 
512MB should be okay, but 1GB would be ideal. Are your other apps being zippy enough? If you want to go back to Safari at any stage, resetting it from the Safari menu may speed things up slightly for you. Of course, some sites just work better with Camino though (and vice versa). :)

Happy New Year.
 
Howdy Mad Jew Mate:

I am running 512 Now - so advice from JacksterUK is at least 1G RAM

so to incease to 1G I should procure 512 RAM additional, yes?- yet if I understand correctly I have a capacity to increase this machine up to 2G RAM - no? ( info from Data Memory Systems site )
G5 iMac 1.8 GHz

Lately my applications have slowed down a bit as well as Safari has crashed quite a bit lately - especially when I have an eBay page open
Camino seems better - but I did see the colourful beachball since I download'd Camino - so who can say - as I did empty my cache again and things seem a bit zippier.......

Cheers ya thanks

Glad New Year
 
Correct and correct. Aim for a reputable RAM dealer who supplies memory for Macs and get that extra 512MB. It's not terribly difficult to replace RAM yourself, but I'm sure they'll do it for you if you pay a nominal fee. :)
 
nomadix said:
Howdy PlaceofDi's:

I know Mozilla as that is what I switched to when I was PC -

as for the other recommendation - for the increase of RAM - as I have 512 now and want to increase to 1G I should buy another 512 yes - as they have listed:: DM50 611 x 2 /512MB Kit 2 x 256MB DDR PC3200 400MHz (Non ECC) 32x64 CL3 2.6v 184 Pin DIMMs (Lifetime Warranty)

Or do I purchase the 1Gb

Thanks for taking my hand as it were...

Glad New Year

Cheers
Click to expand...

okay, well with the RAM you have a few options.
(i'm guessing you have 1x512 stick and not 2x256 in your iMac, correct? - you can check this in System Profiler in your Utilities folder)

1. you can buy 1x512mb stick which will give you 1gig total.
2. you can buy 1x1gig which will give you 1.5gig total (but they won't be a matched pair, so they will be a tiny bit slower, matched pairs work better.)
3. you can buy 1x1gig and remove the 512 stick for now so you don't get the tiny slowdown. (if you buy the 1gig stick you can test either config to see if you notice a difference).

the only reason i'd go for the 1x1gig is incase you decide to upgrade up to 2gigs total later, because then you'll need 2x1gig sticks. if you wanted to you could of course max out your ram right away by buying that config. like i said, lots of options. decide what you think you'll want in the end and go for it. i'd only buy the 1x512 if you don't think you'll want to go beyond 1gig total for your machine, because otherwise its a bit of a waste.

if you decide to buy the 512 config, make sure you'll get the 1x512 as you only have two slots, and one is already used. same with the 1gig. make sure its a single stick.

if you need help selecting the right one, or aren't sure. let me know here or you can PM me questions too. :)

nomadix said:
Just downloaded Camino- SHINY - I dig
Click to expand...

glad that you like Camino. if you miss the spellchecker, its in the latest nightly build, which is linked to from thier site. also CamiTools is a plug-in thats gives you a lot of great features. :D
 
More RAM is always better but one thing you said that caught my attention is that this problem has not always happened. Have you checked your hard drive capacity? Mac OS X likes to have around 10-15% free hard disk space for paging. This is especially important if you only have 512MB of RAM. I have to deal with this on my Mac mini with 512MB of RAM. I know when I start getting beachballed, it's time to check my disk space. Sure enough, I only have about 5% left. I then back up stuff to an external drive and everything runs smoothly again.
 
Howdy Topgunn:

Have plenty of space on my hard drive - almost 60G

and PlaceofDi's: Cheers thanks for the insite - I'll see what I can afford next month and report back

Glad New Year y'all

Cheers thanks
 
nomadix said:
and PlaceofDi's: Cheers thanks for the insite - I'll see what I can afford next month and report back

Glad New Year y'all

Cheers thanks
Click to expand...

not a problem. its what we're here for. and it can sure be confusing. :D

hope you have a great new year as well.
 
topgunn said:
More RAM is always better but one thing you said that caught my attention is that this problem has not always happened. Have you checked your hard drive capacity? Mac OS X likes to have around 10-15% free hard disk space for paging. This is especially important if you only have 512MB of RAM. I have to deal with this on my Mac mini with 512MB of RAM. I know when I start getting beachballed, it's time to check my disk space. Sure enough, I only have about 5% left. I then back up stuff to an external drive and everything runs smoothly again.
Click to expand...

Yes, I also had this problem with my Macbook with a gig of RAM even about 10% disk space still is a bit sluggish.
 
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