Spinning Beachball problem... Please Help!

[RichyHo]

I posted this on the Apple forums but got no response - wondering if any of you clever guys/girls could help me out??



"Hi

Last night I added a new user account to my Macbook and when I clicked on 'edit' next to the user picture, the mac beachballed. After 30 minutes it was still spinning so I held in the power button for 5 seconds to force a hard shutdown. Upon rebooting, all seemed fine until login had completed, at which point it beachballed again. After a while the fans started to go quite loud, then quietened down again and I think I could hear the faint noises of the hard disk being accessed. I tried again this morning and it was still beachballing after an hour.

Unfortunately the other account I created is not an admin account so I can't go in via that to try and fix anything (?)

Oh, one other thing I did was enable 'itunes helper' in my startup applications list. Not sure what it does (sounded useful) - maybe that's part of the issue??

Any ideas would be gratefully received.

Additional info:

I booted up in 'safe boot' mode by pressing SHIFT during bootup. I disabled (unchecked) all startup items in the accounts preferences and created another new admin account with a view to logging in using that and doing a 'repair permissions'.

Logging on with any account, even in safe boot mode, now results in a spinning beachball once the desktop appears. As time goes by, the fan speed increases, and the ball refuses to go away.

I don't have my OSX install disk with me as I am working away from home at the moment.

Any ideas?

Thanks"



I have managed to run repair permissions in disk utility (I got in quick before the beachball appeared), but it found no issues. I can still boot OK into XP.

Thanks

Rich

 

[iCol]

Interesting!

Have you tried booting in single user mode and running /sbin/fsck -fy? To boot in single user mode, hold down Apple and 's' at startup.

If this doesn't work, you might consider purchasing DiskWarrior. It is a very useful tool to have and may solve your problem.

iCol

 

[RichyHo]

Hi iCol - thanks for the very quick response.

Have you tried booting in single user mode and running /sbin/fsck -fy?

No I haven't. I keep finding out about new modes (yesterdays revelation was 'safe boot mode').

What does /sbin/fsck -fy do?

Thanks

Rich

 

[chadgroove]

Unless I totally missed it, I think Diskwarrior is PowerPC only still. Single user mode is definitely worth a try. If you can login on the other admin account download Onyx or Tiger Cache Cleaner. Just run the standard Automation process on Onyx and if it doesn't help try some different 'advanced" options. If possible you may want to try TechTool Deluxe/Pro As far as I know its the closest thing to Diskwarrior that will boot an intel mac. However I have had it do more harm than goo in the past (possibly my fault though )

 

[iCol]

In Disk Utility, you have the option to 'Repair Disk Permissions' and 'Verify Disk', but you do not have the option to 'Repair Disk' as you are using the startup disk.

What /sbin/fsck -fy does, is allow you to repair your hard drive if there are any problems using the command line and without the need of an external drive or disk. You need to keep doing /sbin/fsck -fy until it says 'Macintosh HD appears to be okay' or whatever you called your HD.

Oh, and once you have done that you need to type shutdown -r now to reboot.

Hope this helps

 

[RichyHo]

Thanks guys - I'll try at lunchtime and report back.

I'm hoping that 'single user mode' allows me a bit more time to run commands than a normal boot does. Generally I have about 10 secs to launch whatever application I am using to try and fix the issue (eg. disk utility), as the beachball appears pretty quickly after the desktop does (whichever account I log on with).

 

[RichyHo]

No joy I'm afraid.

Doing the fsck thing didn't turn up any errors.

I reset the pram(?) as that had been suggested elsewhere.

I got rid of all startup items and enabled automatic login

As soon as my XP drive appears on the desktop I get a beachball. Every time.

Is there a quick way to monitor what application/process is hogging the system?

Thanks

 

[Frisco]

Open up Activity Monitor

 

[RichyHo]

Open up Activity Monitor

Thanks Frisco - Does Activity Monitor list all processes as well as show CPU/RAM usage? I have in mind the windows equivalent (Task Manager) which has a list of all processes with their CPU% and memory usage on its 'proceses' tab.

 

[Frisco]

Thanks Frisco - Does Activity Monitor list all processes as well as show CPU/RAM usage? I have in mind the windows equivalent (Task Manager) which has a list of all processes with their CPU% and memory usage on its 'proceses' tab.

Yes it's the Windows equivalent.

 

[RichyHo]

Event manager, like everything else, crashes once the ball appears.

 

[RichyHo]

Success!!

Removing Micros**t Media Player fixed it.