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spinning beach ball and video issues

my problem is i have a macbook pro 13 inch early 2011 model

it's never gave me any hassle but this week it decided the spinning beach ball should visit me a lot, no matter what program i'm using

could be safari or paint or even itunes it makes an appearance.

when doing video playback even on videos that were previously fine the picture will stop, the sound keeps going for a few seconds or all the time then the picture goes into fast forward to catch up and the sound stops. i know it's not the video as i'm able to copy it onto my ipad and watch it there fine.

doesn't matter if it's via quicktime, itunes or youtube it does it, and the beach ball appears.

i've cleaned out the registry, ran malware, adware and virus checkers, deleted and reinstalled flash.

had a couple of adwares and one virus and removed them, also reinstalled the el capitain update and OS-X twice via the recovery option and it stills happens. i've done smc and pram resets after looking up similar issues other have had and tried their fixes

is there anything else i can try? as it was fine tuesday then it happened as i was watched a downloaded tv program. this has been deleted now.

Posted on Nov 29, 2015 9:49 AM

24 replies

Dec 2, 2015 2:27 AM in response to loki scotland

just a quick up date i spoke to Steven from apple on the phone and he suggested after explaining what i had already checked and found out on here via etrecheck that i try one last thing which was a clean install of OSX

so far that has fixed the video issues, so there must have been a conflict somewhere. no idea how as i've not downloaded any new video software, but thats one problem fixed but etrecheck still comes up with the I/O read error not as often but still there.

still going to take the machine down for a check with the genius guys

etresoft

Level 8

46,672 points

Dec 2, 2015 7:05 PM in response to loki scotland

Hello loki,

Just to repeat what others have said, your hard drive is failing. The hard drives in notebook machines tend to die after 2-3 years. Generally, anyone with a problem that sounds like a hard drive failure on an older machine probably just needs a new hard drive. Sometimes hard drives die a slow death. Sometimes the fail spectacularly. Back before I switched to SSDs, I used to replace my hard drives every two years whether they needed it or not.

The important thing with the EtreCheck report is that EtreCheck looks at the same log files that Linc Davis asked you to list. But log files are always being re-written and re-cycled. It doesn't mean anything if the number of errors goes down or even goes away.

In the past, when diagnosing issues like this, I would also recommend an erase and reinstall. If there were any problems with the reinstall, I would recommend a new hard drive. But that was years ago and I've seen this pattern so many times since then that I don't see the point in making people suffer like that. Just get a new hard drive and you'll be fine. Your hard drive is mostly empty, so you can get away with a 240 GB and those are quite inexpensive, even in the UK. And as long as you (or someone) is opening up the machine, you may as well add more RAM too.

Finally, your EtreCheck report says you don't have a Time Machine backup. I strongly suggest you make that your top priority.

Dec 3, 2015 1:25 AM in response to etresoft

i manually back up any files i want to keep.

mainly pictures and it's kept on a separate external drive.

i learned that one the hard way after i had a windoze machine stolen. time machine might good but if the physical machine isn't there it's not much use really.

found a couple of uk based suppliers for them and they are reasonable in price and memory. i'll probably wait now until after christmas to do it.

etresoft

Level 8

46,672 points

Dec 3, 2015 6:11 AM in response to loki scotland

Hello again loki,

Just so you know, the drive could fail at any time. The nice part about a Time Machine backup is that it takes all of the effort out of backing up and restoring. Even if you have manually saved the files you want to keep, it will take some time to get a new hard drive setup. With Time Machine, it would be just one click of a button to restore.

Also, a backup drive is not nearly as critical as an internal drive. You can get good prices on external USB drives from any "big box" office store. Your machine only supports USB 2.0, so you don't even need USB 3.0 (although I would still recommend 3.0).

Dec 8, 2015 2:52 PM in response to loki scotland

ok this is starting to get really really weird.

when i did the clean install i forgot to untick the encrypt hard drive option and it hung.

after trying a few things to get it ti un hang i did a clean install again.

so the video issue has gone as it did come back again, but this is the bit i don't get the spinning beachball has gone and only comes back after i do something really processor/ memory intensive but the hard drive has magically repaired itself and i'm not get any more errors.

now i know if something is broke it doesn't fix itself. i've still got an appointment with a genius on thursday to check it out but this is weird

etresoft

Level 8

46,672 points

Dec 8, 2015 4:50 PM in response to loki scotland

Hello again loki,

When you do a clean install, you erase all the data on the drive and start using different parts of the drive. Once you get to the bad parts of the drive, it will start to misbehave again. Hard drives just go bad after a time.

Dec 11, 2015 2:04 AM in response to etresoft

and the results are in......

the hard drive is failing.

took the genius all of about 60 secs after he plugged in his diagnostics thingy

so he asked what i was going to do. so told him of my plans for ssd and memory upgrade

nice chap even give me a name of a decent local company who supplies the bits needed

Dec 30, 2015 9:29 AM in response to loki scotland

memory upgrade done. nice and easy to do. used a company called crucial.com

also got the SSD to come from them via amazon. lightening deal meant it was a lot cheaper that way but i have to wait a bit longer.

but pleased with the memory upgrade. took me longer to find my screwdriver than do the swap. didn't even need a hammer 😢

Jan 5, 2016 3:14 PM in response to loki scotland

all work now done just finished fitting the SSD

took 2 hrs all in

10 mins to fit the drive after cloning the old HDD onto it.

machine flies now.

thanks guys!!

spinning beach ball and video issues