The infamous snow leopard beach ball - does a clean install solve it?

[whitedragon101]

Since installing snow leopard I have been falling out of love with the Mac just works experience I had in Leopard. I used my girlfriends laptop which still runs leopard today; the spaces animation was smooth not a juddery mess that hurts my eyes, and I could browse the web without a beach ball in sight. Sigh those were the days.....

The main SL problem from my experience and going through the forum seems to be beach balling in both safari and firefox and just plain beach balling in general. The main solution suggested seems to be format your hard drive and install anything again. A massive pain to say the least. So here are my questions to hopefully answer the main questions so everyone can see the answers:

1) Several people seem to have said they did clean installs an it didn't solve their problems. Will a clean install really stop the beach balling?

2) Are there any other solutions to prevent the beach-balling? (mainly seems to happen in safari and firefox).

3)
a) Any idea if apple will release updates to solve the beach-balling problem and generally patch snow leopard to health? (the juddery 3fps spaces animation is particularly awful).
b) How long will that take?

 

[badgolfer]

Solution?

I had the same problem which was driving me mad with Snow Leopard. I ran the performance update that came out last week and 'touch wood' the problem has not reappeared since. Maybe a coincidence - but I have not seen the beach ball since.

 

[iLog.Genius]

I had the same problem which was driving me mad with Snow Leopard. I ran the performance update that came out last week and 'touch wood' the problem has not reappeared since. Maybe a coincidence - but I have not seen the beach ball since.

I originally thought that too...until it popped up again a day after. Hopefully it works for you but I wouldn't hold your breath.

 

[chillwill]

Well, I just replaced the HD on my MBP 13", SL. While the beachballs are gone with Safari (fingers crossed) I am just now getting them with folder listings.

 

[miles01110]

Have you installed the "Performance Update" from Apple?

 

[frenetic]

I did not have any beach ball but noticed lots of disk activity, also while not doing anything. After having installed the disk performance thingie, I have no more unexplainable disk activity. It might also help to clear all of your system and user caches through Onyx or another app.

 

[macachia]

This is exactly the problem I'm having. Sadly my imac late 07 model isn't compatible with the performance update apple released. Hope 10.6.2 fixes this, I don't have time to reinstall everything with a format!