Why is the color wheel always coming out?

Hi Miguel,

Let's try to isolate the issue...

When you startup your computer, are there any applications running? If so, what are they? To see which applications you've configured to run on startup, you'll need to go into System Preferences > Accounts > Click on your username on the left hand column and click on the Login Items tab.

Anything listed there?

Another thing to try, launch Activity Monitor (located in your Utilities folder, which is in your Applications folder). If your into Activity Monitor it'll list every running process on the machine. In the top bar of this application change the drop down to show "All Processes." Is there anything using more than about 10% CPU? In the bottom, change the tab to System Memory. What percentage of the pie chart is green?

they told me it's fine. I told them it's not coz I see how other macbooks run

The hardware might indeed be fine, but that wouldn't preclude a software problem which won't show up during a hardware test.

I would first suggest running Activity Monitor, selecting in the pulldown menu to show All Processes, then clicking in the CPU column to sort by that stat (click the header until the arrow is pointing down so that processes that are taking up the most CPU time are shown at the top). Then watch that and see if a particular process is taking up a lot of CPU time when the "busy" indicator appears. That might give an idea as to what's slowing down the system.

Regards.

HI,

lets try simply:

The spinningwheel is an indication that your computer waits for some application to due a certain task. that can be loading a certain page in a browser, or that can be loading lots of info into the memory. both of this take time. So the diagnostics is meant to find out, which of your applications needs time, and for which reason, and then get the "therapy" to cure it. For example, if you load photodirectories of many thousand large pictures, or several dvd movies or games, then your MB's memory is overloaded, and has to write things to disk, which takes a lot of time.

As JasonFear said, go to your Login and make sure that no application is running at Login. Then restart your MB.
After restart, there should be no application in the Dock which is highlighted with a little point or similar, except Finder and Dock.
If there are other applications, click on them and quit them ("Cmd-q").
Now there should be no spinning wheel. right? if not, stop here and report back!

if things are fine, then start your browser. i understand, this is Safari. What kind of internet connection do you have? DSL (or ADSL)? what speed? are you connected by a wi-fi, or by a cable? just to know, so that we get the right diagnostics.
Still no spinning wheel after Safari has started and loaded the start-up page? If spinning wheel, tell us. if not, continue.

Surf a bit to places where you previously have experienced the spnnwheel.
are you playing games via internet? these can be timeconsuming (due to lengthy downloads) and will cause the computer to wait, so the spnnwl comes up. Tell us!

If everything works fine , continue. start the next of you favourite applications. iMusic? some DVD games? tell us which application you have started when the spnnwl comes up.

Please, do this, as we need more info to help you. N any case, you MB should not be the problem. Most likely is the problem in the way, how you use it, and by using it in the most efficient way will make out of it a terrible little machine!

Cheers, Thomas

Hi, Miguel

this can't be true - or something is bad hardware.

1. once more: close all applications you see (no icon in the dock is hichlighted).
2. open Activity Monitor (in Utilities), click on CPU, make sure that "all processes" is selected. Which process takes more than say, 10 % of cpu?

3. which Users show up in this table? only you and the system (which is called "root" here)? if not, please report back with this info.

4. Now click on RSIZE (still in Act.Mon). Which processes occupy more than 500 MB?

5. Now click on "System Memory" - anything green left? if not,report here.

6. Now click on "Disk Usage". How much green is left? report it here.

7. now terminate Activity Monitor, and do a hardware test - look here for details: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509. It could be that the additional RAM which you have is a problem.

please report the results of every step, so that we can narrow down your problem.

Once more: make sure that there is NO application running!

Hope this helps - and REPORT BACK _ SOON !!!

Thomas

It may sound weird but I think Safari might cause the problem.
My laptop experienced the same problem of the colorful spinning wheel whenever I opened Safari. At 1st, I couldn't figure out what was going on with my laptop as Macbooks are supposed to be much faster than PCs.
I hardly ever suspected Safari as it's one of the applications designed by Apple, which accordingly is supposed to run perfectly on Mac. However, as the problem persisted each time Safari was opened, I started to wonder.
I tried downloading Firefox (of course with Safari browser, thus it took me like forever to get the application completely downloaded) and have used it instead of Safari, and the problem was fixed!