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My new Powerbook is giving me too much spinning beach ball!

K

KevRC4130

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 1, 2004
278
0
Massachusetts
Hey all,
My 3 week old PB 1.33 (stock) has been giving me the spinning beachball curser all day, and seems to be lagging, a lot worse than ever. It just started happening today. I hope I didn't get any spyware or anything, this is a Mac after all! Does anyone know why this has happened, and how to fix it (like any clean out programs or something)?

Thanks!
 
I wouldn't worry at all about spyware, but if your machine is a new, stock 1.33 PB you only have 256MB of ram... not enough! 512MB is really the minimum to run OSX with any significant usability, and 768 or 1GB of ram us much better.

I would go to:

www.crucial.com

...and order yourself a 512 stick to up your ram to 768. Once OSX has enough ram it runs beautifully!

Some people whine about how some machines sold by apple don't come with enough ram, and it sucks they need to go out and get more to make the machine run smoothly. I personally agree but whatever, get some more ram and life will be fine!

I agree with the above post too... a fresh OSX install with repaired permissions is a beautiful thing!

Cheers,

James
 
Kingsnapped said:
Sometimes when the beach-ball is going too much... I like to drive it along horizontal lines on the screen.

Helps it feel faster...
Click to expand...

I did the same thing with the original spinning black and wihite ball.
 
Before you go and reinstall OS X, I would run repair permissions first, to see if that fixes the problem (which is does 80% of the time).

run the disk utility which can be found in Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility

Select the primary hard disk and under the first aid tab click on the repair disk permissions problems. OS X is based on unix, which is very choosy about file permissions, and can effect how programs run. Sometimes installing programs and updates messes up file permissions. This utility will correct them.

I would also agree with James L, you may need more RAM.
 
Were you serious about NOT doing anything that the people were talking about on the OWC board? It sounded kinda interesting.

I disabled my Disk sleep but am still trying to figure out how to diable journaling, i think that maybe on a Powerbook that it would better for added speed!
 
Run Disk First Aid in the disk utility and fsck under single user boot.

If there are problems either of these will find, fix them, since they sometimes cause the HD access to hang -- giving you spinning balls.
 
Kingsnapped said:
Sometimes when the beach-ball is going too much... I like to drive it along horizontal lines on the screen.

Helps it feel faster...
Click to expand...


I too move the ball from the left to the right. Often across the top edge of a window. I don't know why....just one of those things.
 
Grokgod said:
Were you serious about NOT doing anything that the people were talking about on the OWC board? It sounded kinda interesting.

I disabled my Disk sleep but am still trying to figure out how to diable journaling, i think that maybe on a Powerbook that it would better for added speed!
Click to expand...

The person said don't listen to THE FIRST POST in that link.
 
Kingsnapped said:
Sometimes when the beach-ball is going too much... I like to drive it along horizontal lines on the screen.

Helps it feel faster...
Click to expand...


I try to find something to put my spinning ball on something that looks creative like in the circle of a cd icon.
 
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