Why so Many Spinning Beach Balls Pt2

[shankara7]

Was having the same issue a couple of months ago.
Went from 8 gigs of ram to 24 and still had the same problem.
Last week as a last resort I erased my hard drive & did a clean install of Mavericks.
Glad I say no beach balls.
Please make sure you have backed up your files.

 

[Yaboze]

I have the same or similar MBP as you, late 2011. I had the 750GB 5400RPM HDD. It came with Lion, which I updated to ML and then Mavericks via MAS.

It started to get slow, beach balls, etc. I'd log in and watch icons bounce 10-20x before apps would launch. However, my boot times, beach ball frequency and issues didn't seem as bad as yours. BTW, I had 8GB from the start, so I can't compare 4 to 8GB of ram.

I fixed my issue by buying a SSD and installing Mavericks clean.

No more beach balls, no more slowdowns. It works better than the day I brought it home.

It's not the best solution for everyone, but it fixed my issues.

 

[Huntn]

I have the same or similar MBP as you, late 2011. I had the 750GB 5400RPM HDD. It came with Lion, which I updated to ML and then Mavericks via MAS.

It started to get slow, beach balls, etc. I'd log in and watch icons bounce 10-20x before apps would launch. However, my boot times, beach ball frequency and issues didn't seem as bad as yours. BTW, I had 8GB from the start, so I can't compare 4 to 8GB of ram.

I fixed my issue by buying a SSD and installing Mavericks clean.

No more beach balls, no more slowdowns. It works better than the day I brought it home.

It's not the best solution for everyone, but it fixed my issues.

Thanks for the report! I see the genius tomorrow.

A reminder this follows a clean install of Mavericks, after which the computer seemed to function ok for about 3 days. Have run Disk Utility from recover mode. Repaired HD, message was "normal".
Checked Permissions, message was "normal". Also upgraded to 8GB RAM and that registers in "about this Mac". And BTW, this is something that has been deteriorating over a period of a couple of months, steadily getting worse. At one point it was just an annoyance with a few SBs now and then, now they have reached such a state that the computer is unusable. I'm suspecting I'll be very glad I paid for the extended warranty, which ime pays off about 60-70% of the time.


Here is how bad it is:
Restarted last night due to "glacial" issue- normal restart allowed it to do it's thing and shut down naturally (not forced).

2316- Selected Restart
2327- Gray screen appeared
2330- Startup tone
2332- Login page, logged in
2342- Functional desktop
27 minutes


Used Safari- left it running. Put to sleep last night
This morning woke up
0741- woke up
0742- things look normal. Launch App Store
0743-45 App Store icon bounces
0746- App store window appears
0746-59- SBs (spinning balls)
0759- unplug external USB hub and external HDs. They had not appeared on the desktop anyway.
0804-16 Desktop frozen and unresponsive
35 minutes

Yelled "BS!" and selected force Restart
0816- Force Restart
0818- Login Window, logged in.
0820- blank App Store Window appeared
0824-49- SBs
0850- Able to quit App Store
0852- Safari window appears, but it's frozen.
0902- Safari momentarily seems functional but then...
0903-15 SBs
59 minutes

In disgust, put to sleep in anticipation of Genius bar, started using my PC which starts and achieves a funtional desktop in about 20 sec.

Anyone think it would be better to carry this to the Genius Bar asleep in it's problem state or completely shut down?
Thanks!

 

[Yaboze]

Even though the HD checked out OK, I think your HD is failing. Does the SMART status say anything? Maybe try another HD tool to verify it?

Can you borrow another HD from a friend, quickly install OSX and try that?

That would rule out a hardware issue with the MBP itself.

 

[Huntn]

Even though the HD checked out OK, I think your HD is failing. Does the SMART status say anything? Maybe try another HD tool to verify it?

Can you borrow another HD from a friend, quickly install OSX and try that?

That would rule out a hardware issue with the MBP itself.

I'll check smart status if I can get it to work. Any suggestions on a good hard drive utility? I need to check if disk warrior does that... Thanks!

Update: Hmm, referencing that link, no SMART info appeared in the info box. Must be for an older version of OSX and/or it only works for certain type of drives.

 

[Huntn]

At the Genius Bar, identified fix: bad hard drive! Yaboze and whoever else suggested hard drive issue wins the prize! Should walk out of here today in an hour. If you look at this thread, my complaint about this issues goes back for months....

Also of possible interest I asked the Genius about what utility could of identified this issue a long while ago. His answer was Techtool or Drive Genius. You may remember that Apple used to include Techtool with AppleCare. I have an older version of my own, which I may upgrade, just cause it might have saved me months of frustration. File for the future- Drive Utility does not look for bad HDs. I have to figure out how to look at SMART status.

 

[xgman]

Update- The 8GB memory arrived, I installed it, anxiously awaited startup and I was greeted with... SPINNING BALLS, lol. Just to be sure, I used the Recovery drive and ran Disk Utilityrepair on my main HD and verified that it was ok and I repaired permissions. No problems found. At this point I believe this is something other than a "memory" issue.

On restart, it took 2 minute for the login page to appear, and another 2 minutes for the desktop to appear, but then it took another 22 minutes to reach a "functional" desktop where programs would launch, where I could right click an icon, or move an icon without a frack'n SB. So I've had it. I've made an appointment at the local Genius bar because before I pull any more hair out, I want to verify that I don't have a hardware issue. Maybe they will discover the source of this issue which is rendering my computer not suitable for serious work.

Another update forthcoming on Friday (the day I see the Genius).

You should boot into safe mode and see what happens and then remove every non essential app from users/login items, library/startupitems and library/launch daemons and library/launch agents,. Then reboot a couple times, repair permissions in disk utility and then if better, trial and error on what was causing the trouble based on what you removed from starting.

 

[Yaboze]

At the Genius Bar, identified fix: bad hard drive! Yaboze and whoever else suggested hard drive issue wins the prize! Should walk out of here today in an hour. If you look at this thread, my complaint about this issues goes back for months....

Also of possible interest I asked the Genius about what utility could of identified this issue a long while ago. His answer was Techtool or Drive Genius. You may remember that Apple used to include Techtool with AppleCare. I have an older version of my own, which I may upgrade, just cause it might have saved me months of frustration. File for the future- Drive Utility does not look for bad HDs. I have to figure out how to look at SMART status.

I'm glad you got it sorted out.

 

[Huntn]

I'm glad you got it sorted out.

Thanks! Now that I'm home and have this sorted out my MBP is such a breath of fresh air, really now, it works. Before hand, performance was deteriorating rapidly. This morning after a reboot it had taken 1 hr to reach a working state. Hopefully this is all behind me now, fingers crossed, knock on wood.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

I have to figure out how to look at SMART status.

Use a commandline utility like smartctl in the smartmontools package:
http://www.geoffk.org/smartmontools/smartmontools-5.41gfk1.dmg

 

[smithrh]

The other thing you can do is look through your console logs for "Disk I/O" errors.

Even one of those and you're pretty much going to need a new hard drive.

 

[Huntn]

Use a commandline utility like smartctl in the smartmontools package:
http://www.geoffk.org/smartmontools/smartmontools-5.41gfk1.dmg

The other thing you can do is look through your console logs for "Disk I/O" errors.

Even one of those and you're pretty much going to need a new hard drive.

I'll check out the link and need to figure out where console logs are. I found an article online that said SMART status could be read in Disk Utility by selecting a drive and Get Info. Could this have been for an older version of MacOS, because I did not see SMART status when trying this? Thanks!

 

[smithrh]

Use the aptly named "Console" app to view the console logs. Its default location is under Utilities so you may not have noticed it before.

Mind you, it's cryptic stuff, and it can be confusing as there's a lot of entries that are there for non-critical reasons. That is, not everything in the console logs are important or even problems, so don't freak out when you take a look in there.

Also, some of the more troublesome entries in the log files can look innocent.

Having said that, the console logs are the first place I go when something feels amiss.

WRT Disk Utility and SMART - make sure you're selecting the physical drive and it will show up. Typically it will only say "Verified." You can also get SMART status through "About This Mac" and select "More Info" and then "System Status" from there, then select Storage.

IIRC, SMART only works on internal drives or something like that. I don't put a whole lot of stock into SMART, I've had problems with drives that didn't show any issues with SMART.

 

[Huntn]

Use the aptly named "Console" app to view the console logs. Its default location is under Utilities so you may not have noticed it before.

Mind you, it's cryptic stuff, and it can be confusing as there's a lot of entries that are there for non-critical reasons. That is, not everything in the console logs are important or even problems, so don't freak out when you take a look in there.

Also, some of the more troublesome entries in the log files can look innocent.

Having said that, the console logs are the first place I go when something feels amiss.

WRT Disk Utility and SMART - make sure you're selecting the physical drive and it will show up. Typically it will only say "Verified." You can also get SMART status through "About This Mac" and select "More Info" and then "System Status" from there, then select Storage.

IIRC, SMART only works on internal drives or something like that. I don't put a whole lot of stock into SMART, I've had problems with drives that didn't show any issues with SMART.

Thanks for the info! Any idea what a console related entry would say about a failing hd?

 

[smithrh]

Anything with "Disk I/O" is a red flag, especially if coming from the kernel process, but there could be a lot of other unpredictable error messages from other processes as well, typically items relating to read and write errors, timeouts, etc.

Again, don't get yourself in a state looking at the console, there's a lot of dreck in there. As a Unix developer (non-Apple) some years ago, I'd write messages to the console (/dev/console) as my programs would go about their work, those messages were only interesting and meaningful to me as the developer. They also didn't mean anything was wrong in the slightest (although they might).

I'd suggest using the very nice System Log Query tool within Console and make a query for messages of Level is at least Critical. This should cut the chaff down almost entirely.

 

[Che Castro]

I installed an ssd 128gb , with mavericks I only get a spinning ball when the external drives wake up

 

[Huntn]

I installed an ssd 128gb , with mavericks I only get a spinning ball when the external drives wake up

For anyone with a Mac laptop like mine, when I was in the Apple Store, I asked about upgrading to an SSD and they said for my computer (signature), it was not possible.

And a week after replacing the hard drive, the spinning ball issue has gone away. And of course I imagine it helped doubling the RAM to 8 Gb.

 

[smithrh]

For anyone with a Mac laptop like mine, when I was in the Apple Store, I asked about upgrading to an SSD and they said for my computer (signature), it was not possible.

I think what they meant is that they wouldn't do it, not that it couldn't be done.

I'll tell you what, if you want to make your MBP into a brand new beast, I'd highly highly highly recommend going to SSD.

I'll never use a spinning magnetic drive for anything other than mass storage now.

 

[Huntn]

I think what they meant is that they wouldn't do it, not that it couldn't be done.

I'll tell you what, if you want to make your MBP into a brand new beast, I'd highly highly highly recommend going to SSD.

I'll never use a spinning magnetic drive for anything other than mass storage now.

Interesting. They gave me some techno mumbo jumbo about specs and compatibility and said it was not possible. Anyone with a 2011 MBP stick a SSD drive into it?

 

[SlCKB0Y]

Interesting. They gave me some techno mumbo jumbo about specs and compatibility and said it was not possible. Anyone with a 2011 MBP stick a SSD drive into it?

Yep, and it is dead easy to do and makes the system very responsive!

 

[smithrh]

I've done it on a 2008 MBP and on my mid-2013 MBP.

In fact, on my 2013 MBP, I was so happy with doing it on my 2008 model that I opened up the box, booted it, made sure it worked, and immediately swapped out the HDD for an SDD.

It's *that* *good*.

It simply transforms your Mac into a responsive beast.

Do it!

 

[Huntn]

Thanks guys!