Problem after 10.6.6 update! MDS running from the start on activity monitor

Hi
I have the same problem.

Spotlight is doing a reindex, I think, of the whose system. Just give it an overnight to finish and everything will be back to normal.

Thank you very much for posting this issue and the solution. I run Logic and also have a bootcamp partition and my system was suffering the same exact dilemma as you. MDS was off the charts after ever reboot and wouldn't allow me to load Logic until all the indexing was done.

I followed your solution of excluding bootcamp and everything works perfectly now. Thanks again!

I have the exact same problem. How exactly do you exclude "bootcamp"? Do you mean the partition that bootcamp created, ie do you mean to add to the exclude list the Windows partition?

Also, pvonk said to leave it to reindex and it'll return to normal after it's done. Will that work, cuz I don't like tinkering with my computer because I have little computer knowledge and am afraid I'm gonna mess it up in the process.

I have this problem too i think. My computer now always seems to be running hot and high fans. but no apps are open. i installed istats and it said MDS was using 50% of my CPU.

The thing is I don't have a bootcamp partition to take out of the spotlight search. Any ideas?

Everytime I would open a ProTools session I kept getting HW buffer error, and then ProTools wouldn't open at all.

I was running PT8.04 I had to revert back to PT8.03

PLEASE HELP FIX THIS!

current version of my system
Mac OSX 10.6.6
PT 8.03 <--it was 8.04

10.6.6 worked fine for a few days but once I restarted the problems started.

I'm a designer and have been using macs for almost 10 years now. Never had issues like this. My iMac is only about a year and half old, has 4GB ram, and half of the hard drive space free. So it's not my machine.

I got the spinning beach ball of doom while trying to do anything. Eventually the machine became unusable. I tried everything maintenance thing under the sun.

Eventually I decided screw it. First I downloaded the 10.6.5 combo updater and aded that to an external hard drive for safe keeping.

Then I booted up from the install disk and erased my entire hard drive. Then reinstalled snow leopard from the disk. Somehwhat luckily I use Super Duper and had basically a clone of my hard drive - but from about a month ago. Plus daily backups of Time Machine on a separate drive.

So I updated to 10.5.6, used migration assistant to copy everything from my super duper clone and have been using my time machine backup to grab newer files.

No way in **** going back to 10.6.6. until Apple comes out with a fix and I don't see a huge amount people reporting issues here.

For now my computer is back to the nice, snappy imac I came to love.

Thanks Thanos,
I had the same issue, MDS was ramping my CPU, I excluded bootcamp from spotlight indexing and everything is fine now.

Thanks again

Message was edited by: mikfreeman

This problem started happening to me on both my iMacs as well. I have a brand new 27" 3.06 Core2Duo which started to experience boot and shutdown problems after running the 10.6.6 update. My 21.5 3.06 Core2Duo (have had for just over a year) is suffering quite a bit more. My 21.5" iMac has Bootcamp installed, as mentioned in this thread and at the following thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12968046#12968046

I had noticed extremely sluggish behavior and many cases of the spinning wheel of lost hope. I run MenuMeters, so noticed a higher than usual CPU utilization - looking into Activity Monitor, mds was taking between 30% and 50% of my CPU.... ordinarily that shouldn't be a problem, but since that is Spotlight's indexer, I imagine there was IO contention. I plan on removing Bootcamp this weekend (don't really use it anymore thanks to Parallels 6).

Additionally, I have experienced horrible WiFi performance on both iMacs since updating. I have seen a few mentions on the Internet about this, but no real official acknowledgement. My icon in the Menubar indicates that the connection is still solid, however, I'm unable to resolve websites, etc. I assume that it is losing its connection momentarily to my router, and not reresolving with DHCP upon reconnect. This problem seems to be pretty repeatable when I use Fast User Switching... Anyone else having this problem? I have ruled out my router, as my Windows box and Linux laptops have zero issues. I hope Apple is resolving this issue -- making me eat my words when I told my wife that we HAD to go Mac since its so much more reliable! 🙂

- Paul

I feel your pain!!

After 11 years of using a MAC I've just about had enough. That last update has totally screwed up my finder and spotlight - kinda need it when searching through thousands of images...

Add the constant hanging of Safari - it's hung whilst typing this - something to do with CCacheServer.app... The Safari INSERT-HANG-DETECTED problem too.

MDS is taking the temperature into the 80s.

Totally had enough! Just give me an OS that flippin works!!!

Thank you for fixing my problem! This was actually causing kernel panics in my computer a few minutes after a reboot. Apple should have known better

The same symptoms started happening to me as soon as I upgraded my MacBook Pro to 10.6.6. I thought it was a disk error and rebuilt the system, I use my MBP for work extensively so can't handle these hang ups, I also use Spotlight to help manage massive amounts of query data on a minute by minute basis. The MBP is now unusable for serious work in this condition! Also, my son has a brand new MBP i7 2.88GHz 8GB 7200 500GB Disk, after three days use the dreaded spinning beach ball - come on apple resolve this or give us a tool to easily downgrade to 10.6.5!!!!!!!!!!