Spinning Beach Balls - Many Hard Shutdowns

Question

Railson_2 Author

Level 1

9 points

Spinning Beach Balls - Many Hard Shutdowns

My hardware is a MacBook Pro Mid 2012

Processor 2.9GHz Intel Core i7

Memory 8GB 1600 MHz DDr3

Display is built in 13.3 (1280*800) Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB. I also use a external display SMBX 2350

My Mac software is OS X El Capitan Vs. 10.11.6

I use VMware Fusion 8.1.1 to Connect to Microsoft Windows 10 Version 1607

Spinning Beach Balls happen regularly. They appear when using many different applications. Sometimes I can force shut the application. Sometimes I must do a hard shutdown of the entire computer and then restart.

I cannot spot a particular cause or scenario that occurs before the beachball

I have taken my computer to my local mac retailer but they were unable to do anything. There is no Apple store in the area.

Suggestions please

James

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012), iOS 10.0.2

Posted on Oct 11, 2016 7:47 AM

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Answer 1

chuck_3rd

Community Specialist

Oct 11, 2016 7:59 PM in response to Railson_2

Hi Railson_2,

Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities. Sorry to hear that you are having these issues with your MacBook Pro. If you are seeing a spinning color wheel/wait cursor frequently across multiple applications and actions, you may want to check Activity Monitor to see if there may be a system resource issue (memory/RAM pressure, high CPU usage, low available disk space, etc). You may find the following article helpful:

Use Activity Monitor on your Mac - Apple Support

Regards.

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Answer 2

Railson_2 Author

Level 1

9 points

Oct 12, 2016 12:01 PM in response to chuck_3rd

Thanks alex_h1

Sure is a lot of information provided by the activity monitor.

The problem is in how to interpret the information that is available.

For instance, and specifically for my 'spinning beachball', what should I be looking for and where should I be looking and once it appears what should I do about it.

Any guidance ?

Much appreciated

Railson_2

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Answer 3

i_rina

Community Specialist

Oct 12, 2016 12:01 PM in response to Railson_2

Hi Railson_2,

It depends on how often you are seeing the spinning color wheel. You can keep the Activity Monitor window open in the corner of your screen, and keep an eye on it when the color wheel appears. You may want to start with Memory; it will show a color coded chart corresponding to memory pressure. If you start seeing red, take a look at the list of apps above it for anything also in red and/or that says "Not Responding". CPU would be the next thing to check, though normally heavy CPU usage is pretty obvious (the fans will ramp up as processor usage increases).

Regards.

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Answer 4

John Galt

Level 10

156,296 points

Oct 12, 2016 12:16 PM in response to Railson_2

Back up your Mac if you have not done so already. To learn how to do that please read https://www.apple.com/support/backup/. To learn how to use Time Machine read Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac. The reason for creating a backup is that the symptoms you describe could be indicative of an impending hard disk drive failure, so securing your data is a primary concern.

Then, shut down your Mac and restart it in "Safe Mode". To learn how to do that please read: Try safe mode if your Mac doesn't finish starting up. Compare how your Mac works in Safe Mode to how it has been.

Then, restart normally. If the same problem returns, please read the section If an issue doesn't happen in safe mode for Apple's recommended actions.

Finally, you can temporarily create a new User Account, and log in to that account to determine if the problem also exists when logged in to that Account. To learn how to do that read How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac - Apple Support. When you are finished troubleshooting, you can remove the temporary User Account by following these instructions: OS X El Capitan: Delete a user. Before removing it, confirm you don't need any of the files you might have created in that Account.

Let me know what you determine.

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