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how to get rid of spinning rainbow circle, how to get rid of spinning rainbow circle

How do I get rid of the spinning rainbow circle? It keeps appearing.

Posted on Jan 22, 2012 2:03 PM

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Posted on Sep 26, 2016 4:49 PM

Hi - Thanks for explaining SBOD - I can relate!

I am working on a MacBook Pro with 8 gigs RAM and the largest available internal flash drive. I'm working in MS Word for Mac (Office 365) on a big professional document (75 pages, with tables and figures), with Track Changes turned on. I split the file into 3 parts, about 6 gigs each, to avoid problems with too heavy a document. But I am still getting the SBOD much too frequently. Also getting "There is a serious disk error on Word work file Word{blahblahblahblahblah.temp" Between the SBOD and the serious disk errors, it is really interrupting the work, and this did NOT happen on my previous MacBook Air running OS X Yosemite. I have my calendar, Safari and Mail open, but that's all. I spoke with Microsoft (painfully, at length) and they said it is an Apple problem. I would be very grateful for advice! (And solutions)

- Barbara

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Sep 26, 2016 4:49 PM in response to fane_j

Hi - Thanks for explaining SBOD - I can relate!

I am working on a MacBook Pro with 8 gigs RAM and the largest available internal flash drive. I'm working in MS Word for Mac (Office 365) on a big professional document (75 pages, with tables and figures), with Track Changes turned on. I split the file into 3 parts, about 6 gigs each, to avoid problems with too heavy a document. But I am still getting the SBOD much too frequently. Also getting "There is a serious disk error on Word work file Word{blahblahblahblahblah.temp" Between the SBOD and the serious disk errors, it is really interrupting the work, and this did NOT happen on my previous MacBook Air running OS X Yosemite. I have my calendar, Safari and Mail open, but that's all. I spoke with Microsoft (painfully, at length) and they said it is an Apple problem. I would be very grateful for advice! (And solutions)

- Barbara

Jan 22, 2012 10:54 PM in response to got31

got31 wrote:


How do I get rid of the spinning rainbow circle?

This is known officially as the "spinning wait cursor". Unofficially, it is sometimes affectionately called the SBOD (spinning beachball of death).


The SBOD is not a specific indicator. According to the Mac OS X Human Interface Guidelines, " it is displayed automatically by the window server when an application can't handle all of the events it receives. In general, if an app does not respond for about 2 to 4 seconds, the spinning wait cursor appears."


So it is virtually impossible to help you unless you provide very specific details. In what applications does it appear, and what actions did you perform prior to its appearance?

Jul 15, 2012 2:31 PM in response to fane_j

I've only had my MacBook Pro with Retina for a week and a half. I inserted a flash drive to pull some old photos off of it. I got an error message that it was unable to read the jpeg files and the SBOD appeared and I couldn't get it to stop.

Being a life long PC user, I wanted so much to hit CTRL-ALT-DLT 😮) I couldn't get the cursor to click the red exit ball top left. I tried Command Q and nothing.


I finally took the flash drive out and turned the Mac off and waited. It just came back to life !


In the future, how does one stop the SBOD when it happens?


Ginny

how to get rid of spinning rainbow circle, how to get rid of spinning rainbow circle

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