what does the spinning color wheel mean?

The spinning wheel means the same thing that the hourglass means on Windows. Nothing to be alarmed about.

try utilities, repair ,then try disc repair

<http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/sbbod.html>

Launch the Activity Monitor application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ If you’re running Mac OS X 10.7 or later, open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Activity Monitor in the page that opens.

Select the CPU tab. Select All Processes from the popup menu in the toolbar, if not already selected. Click the heading of the % CPU column in the process table to sort the entries by CPU usage. You may have to click it twice to get the highest value at the top. What is it, and what is the process? Also post the values for % User, % System, and % Idle at the bottom of the window.

Now select the System Memory tab. What values are shown in the bottom part of the window for Page outs and Swap used?