Time Capsule, Pinwheel and Slow Macbook Pro

[noahstout]

Hello,
I am a professor and have just switched from a PC to a Mac. I have had my new MacBook Pro 17" for 2 days, and it has 4 GB Ram and the solid-state 128GB harddrive, 2.66 Ghz, OSX 10.5.7; it is the newest available version of the computer.
I ordered the Time Capsule as a backup solution for my writings (using Time Machine), which I believe is the beginning of the problem. I have only 25GB of files to backup so far, and after 24 hours of a wireless backup attempt on the Time Machine only 6GB was finished. At this time I wanted to watch a movie on my TV and my wireless surround sound system interfered with the Time Machine backup. TM said the backup attempt failed. If I tried to open TM I would just get the spinning pinwheel and my computer would freeze, and I would have to restart by holding the power button. I then deleted the previous backup attempt off of Time Capsule and that allowed me to start another backup. That was last night and now about 4 GB have been backed up but I am having spinning pinwheels all the time now. I have even stopped the backup so I can continue writing my book in Word, and even without Time Machine running Word is giving me the spinning pinwheel (the Word doc is 200 pages, I don't know if that has an influence). I am frustrated because this is a new computer, is supposed to be fast, and has a lot of RAM. My son is running a G4 Powerbook and works with HD video in FCP and says he almost never gets the spinning pinwheel.

Please Help as my work is very pressing
Thanks in advance
Noah Stout

 

[obrien234]

Due to how Time Machine runs, that first backup can take a long time (your case does seem a bit extraneous though). Try plugging your computer into the Time Capsule with an ethernet cord and running that first backup, it should be faster than the wireless. I'd let that 1st backup finish and if you're still seeing problems on the second one, give us another holler.

 

[noahstout]

Spinning Pinwheel

So I have decided to ditch the Time Capsule. But I am still getting the spinning pinwheel while I am in Word (where I do most of my work). This is very frustrating. It occurs when I try to put a comment in the margin of a paper (using the reviewing toolbar). It doesn't happen all the time but fairly often (a few times a day). It seems to happen most frequently when I have written a long comment and want to go back to the beginning of it to revise it. The pinwheel will spin indefinitely and I'll have to force quit the program.
What could be the problem? There are 4GB of RAM in the computer and I would think writing comments in Word would be pretty easy for it to handle.
Thanks!

 

[Gregoreo]

Firewall causing wait?

MS Office applications and other applications may "phone home" to validate their license. This check has occurred when closing or saving. Check the Firewall pane of Security preferences. Try temporarily allowing all incoming connections or disabling your box's firewall. Likewise, a network admin might check that external firewalls are not interfering. Generally, beware of any dependencies on the network.