MacBook keeps getting the beachball of death

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Level 1

70 points

MacBook keeps getting the beachball of death

Here is my problem. On New Years, my wife asked me to clean off her MacBook. I figured I would go ahead and just do a fresh install of OS X, iLife 08, and Office 2008 while I was at it. So I proceeded to backup her stuff, zeroed out the hard drive, and then reinstalled Leopard, iLife 08, and Office 2008. I have installed all updates available on Software Update and the Microsoft Office updater. Other than those programs, I did not install anything else on her MB. I did run Repair Disk Permissions after installing all that stuff. For the past two or three days now, the system seems to lockup whenever I try to open Safari. It will open, start to go to a site (I think it is set for the default Apple page), and then the entire computer will freeze. It will sit frozen for a couple of minutes and then proceed to work as normal. During the time that it is frozen, it gets the spinning beach ball of death. I cannot force quit. Any theories as to what might be going on?

17" Intel iMac Core Duo, Mac OS X (10.5.6), Macbook Core Duo, 10.5.6

Posted on Jan 7, 2009 8:01 AM

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Answer 1

Lyssa

Level 8

41,327 points

Jan 7, 2009 10:13 AM in response to mbushnell

Do any other applications cause this? While the beachball is there, can you launch any other programs or click other windows? Is Safari updated to the latest version?

Before launching Safari, open up Activity Monitor (Applications>Utilities>Activity Monitor) and sort the processes by CPU usage percent. Try to keep the top line (where the first application is listed) visible while opening Safari. Hopefully you'll be able to see if Safari eats up all the CPU energy.

Another thing to try is to create another User Account and use Safari on that account. If Safari runs with no troubles, the issue is somewhere in the main User Account.

~Lyssa

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Answer 2

mbushnell Author

Level 1

70 points

Jan 7, 2009 2:37 PM in response to Lyssa

No other applications except Safari cause this problem as far as I can tell. I'm using Safari 3.2.1. I cannot launch any other programs when the beachball is there. I actually can't do anything when the beach ball appears. It appears that the computer is very sluggish when typing, and I noticed that it is horribly slow while transferring files to my external hard drive. I tried to do a Time machine backup after I did a clean install, and it took over 10 hours for it to transfer about 30 gigs worth of files. It takes about 45 minutes to do 80 gigs on my iMac. Something is definitely off. I tried to do activity monitor, but because the computer freezes I cannot see what is going on until it comes back to life. I have multiple accounts on here for my wife and myself, and this problem happens on both. I think we've just got a lemon of a machine because it has already had the logic board and camera board replaced 3 times and the battery and keyboard replaced once each. My iMac has been a champ since I got it, but this MacBook is another story entirely.

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