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The Spinning wheel is driving me insane!

K

KukkutiMu

macrumors newbie
Original poster
I bought my MacBook 2 years ago. Problems started two weeks after the year long warranty ran out. In a matter of 2 months, the MacBook was freezing constantly, sometimes for several minutes working only for few seconds in between before freezing again. Mostly it kept freezing when I was typing, trying to use Skype, iTunes, iPhoto or Firefox (the only apps I ever really use..) It froze even if I had only one application open.
I took the MacBook to Mac store but without much of an explanation, I was told that I probably needed a new hard drive. This I found hard to believe, considering that I had only had the computer for a year and a bit. So instead I started searching for help on internet. I dont understand much of computers and english isnt my first language, so this has been a rather difficult and frustrating journey. But basically, I've changed the computer's settings so that it never goes to sleep and generally I never turn the computer off. This helped for a little while but eventually the freezing got really bad again. After that I reformatted the hard drive and then the computer was working great for a while again but since I've downloaded few photos and a bit of music, I'm starting to get the wheel again. Just a while ago the computer kept freezing for 30 seconds every second minute, it kept doing this for about an hour. I felt like throwing the whole thing out of the window..🙁
Im not sure what other information to tell you.. At the moment I'm using about 30GB out of 111GB on the hard drive, before reformatting I was using about 60GB.
Can anyone explain why the spinning wheel happens so frequently and for such a long periods without any obvious reason?
Is there realistically anything I can do or should I just give in and buy a new hard drive? (which I dont find too cheap to be honest)
If I do this, should I get new OS as well? (have tiger at the moment)
And how on earth will I prevent the same problem happening again?

I feel rather desperate at the moment, so any help will be much obliged.
 
Have you repaired your HDD in disk utility? I just decided to do that and it seems slightly faster (my iMac).
 
Thanks for your quick reply Sambo110.
Now, I dont think I've ever tried doing this, as a matter of a fact I had to check first what HDD means..😱 With a quick look, I couldnt find very clear instructions on how to do this. Would you be able to tell me how you repaired your hard disk drive?
 
Sweetfeld28, this exactly what I did the last time. I put all my stuff on external hard drive, then reformatted the computer hard drive once (have thought of doing it with the other options; 7 or 35 times, too) and then installed the OS again.
After this everything worked perfectly until I downloaded some pictures and music on the computer. I'm only using very little of the memory at the moment but the spinning wheel already appears frustratingly often..
 
Heres what you could try...to see if you have/need more RAM:

Got to your Apps>Utilities Folder>Activity Monitor>then click the System Memory button at the bottom of the Window. If the Mint Green part of the pie chart is greater than the rest, Free Memory, i would say your fine. However, if your Wired, and Active Memory, is greater and you only have 30 or so MB of RAM available; then its time to add some more.
 
get a 7200RPM Hitachi 320 GB from OWC, need more room? Get the new 7200 RPM 500 GB Seagate . Say goodbye to the spinning Beachball😉😀
 
Consultant, excuse my ignorance with computers, I keep getting confused what RAM is.. i think there's 1GB 😕
here's the info I can find:

Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook2,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
 
Sweetfeld28, I did all that and turns out that there's only 13MB available. I dont get this at all, how is it possible to have so little free space when I've just reformatted the whole lot and haven't got nearly half as much stuff on the computer as I did before??
 
KukkutiMu said:
Consultant, excuse my ignorance with computers, I keep getting confused what RAM is.. i think there's 1GB
Click to expand...

Yes, RAM is otherwise known as memory.
Next time you can google a term to get the definition.

1gb is fairly minimal amount. You should upgrade. Look up on everymac.com the max ram that can be installed and get that.
 
Cheffy Dave, I'd happily say good bye to the spinning ball, had a look at the hard drives, they're not too expensive either..but these are for PC's right, i'd buy a new computer in a flash if i could..!
Consultant, well that's what i suspected, just reckoned 1GB sounded so little.. Thanks for your suggestion, I really hope it'll solve the problem.
 
If your computer is truly freezing for 30 seconds at a time, then it sounds like a hard drive problem. Low RAM can certainly cause delays, but not 30 seconds at a time!

All hard drives work in both PC's and Macs, as long as you buy the right kind, in this case a 2.5" SATA drive.
 
Thanks for your contribution CubeHacker, I found that helpful.
I think at the most ever the computer froze for about 10 minutes. 30 seconds is still a relatively short time in my opinion, it's only annoying when it keeps happening constantly..
Of course, now if it's not about RAM after all.. In the nearest Mac store a new hard drive will cost me over 200€. After just learning that I can get one for more than half cheaper online, I wonder would it be difficult to install it by myself?
I checked the activity monitor again; seems to have about 80MB free now. I think I had Skype on earlier, that must've been taking a lot of space..?
So all in all, it sounds to me that maybe I should get a new hard drive after all and buy some more memory while I'm at it. What I wonder though is, how am I going to prevent the same problem happening again? While browsing through web pages in the past year about this problem, I've understood that I'm not nearly the only one struggling with it.. Also it has seemed to be mostly Tiger OS users complaining about it. Does anyone know if Leopard is any better?
 
Search for "Disk Utility" on Spotlight or in your Hard Drive, open it, select your HDD and click verify and repair, see if that helps.
 
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