So for some reason 90% of the time I go to check my email when I try to click on any thing on the page this rotating rainbow pops up and freezes my computer. The only way to get un frozen is to go back to my home page or if its really bad I have to sometimes turn off my computer and start all over again. What is that icon and what can I do to stop it from happening?
iMac
Go to: System Preferences / Accounts / Login Items and check to see how many Application are set to open at Login/Startup.
If you have a lot, remove most or all and see if that helps.
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Likewise, look at your Dock and check to see how many App's are open? Open App's will have a small blue light on below them. Also note that unlike older OS X versions, Lion wants to keeps all the App's open that you were using in the last session if you don't uncheck the "Keep Apps open" box when you shutdown.
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Also note: that while 4GB is a fair amount of RAM, it is not enough to smoothly run OS X and tons of other App's all at the same time.
It would go a long way if we knew your stats, you know things like what year model iMac is and how much RAM it has.
It sounds kind of like one of two things, one is easily fixed and the later bad if you don't have a good backup plan...
The first, your system is running low on RAM and Paging out to the Hard Drive which is giving you the Spinning Beach Ball. The best solution is to upgrade the RAM to meet your demands or cut back on the number of Applications that are running at the same time.
Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
The second, could be early signs of eminent Hard Drive failure. Which is more likely the older the iMac is and reason to have a good backup plan, because Hard Drives can fail at anytime for various reasons.
I have a Mac OS X Version 10.7 processor 2.7 GHz intel core 5 memory 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3
What is the rotating rainbow icon?
