Spotlight and Spinning Color Wheel

Hi Chris,

I'm not sure I follow you. Booting in Safe Mode and testing with another account tells you it is a startup item. It will always function correctly in Safe Mode, since Safe Mode disables Startup Items.

So you should boot normally and drag ~/Library/StartupItems to the desktop. Does (did) that solve the problem? If so, begin adding items back one at a time until you find the culprit.


-mj
macjack@gmail.com

Well, here is exactly what Safe Mode disables. You might work through the list but the fact that SystemUIServer is not responding may just indicate a corrupt preference.


Navigate to ~/yourHome/Library/Preferences/ByHost/ com.apple.systemuiserver.xxxxxxxxxx.plist where "xxx" corresponds to numbers and letter sand any other apple.systemuiserver.plists there. Then log out and back in or restart.

If that's not the problem, then be sure to back up of all your data. Then, run Disk Utility booted from your DVD install disk, or another drive. Did that sort it?

If not, you may be able to repair this with 10.4.8 PPC Combo Update

This is a fuller install, as opposed to an incremental "delta" update so it should overwrite any files that are damaged or missing. It does not matter if you have applied it before. It has worked well for many.

Remember to Verify Disk before update and repair permissions after update from /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.



-mj
macjack@gmail.com

Message was edited by: macjack

dustdog, Welcome to Apple Discussions.

You are assuming that this is an Apple Update problem because you see a problem similar to yours or even identical. But after every update, some folks experience problems. Usually because there was some pre-existing system corruption and the update exacerbated it.

Remember that being in here and looking at the posts is like being in a hospital emergency room. Almost everyone is here because they have problems. But this is only a tiny fraction of the user base. Most folks have downloaded their updates are going merrily about their computing. And they don't post to say so 😉

I also haven't seen anything to indicate that there was anything wrong with the update or any consistent pattern to the problems posted.

EDIT: Also asking Apple won't help here. These are user-to-user forums. Usually there are no Apple employees here other than the Hosts. Occasionally, Apple employees may log on and are always identified by an Apple logo. (Don't hold your breath looking for one 😉



-mj
macjack@gmail.com

Message was edited by: macjack

Ok, Macjack, got the message. It was late, had too much work: my apologies 🙂
With a fresh cup of coffee this morning, restarted in safe mode, dumped the users cache and the prefs and: all works well again. The same solution was found at http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=778382&tstart=0

Anyway, thanks for the help in the ER 😉

Chris, before you do anything else, I

Suggest you check out The XLab site's Frequently Asked Questions (X-FAQs) http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/sbbod.html

In particular "The Spinning Beach Ball of Death" at
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/sbbod.html

As you will see, most (if not all of) the best fixes coming out of this forum were from this site, Apple's Help or Support site. But in a more constructive manner than some of the recommendations that we members would throw at you.

I have personally bought the book. Great investment.

Best

There have been problems between SystemUIServer, Spotlight and various menu bar items from day one of Tiger. Some of them have been fixed, some haven't. Take everything off the Spotlight side of the menu bar and make sure none of the items you remove are set to be added back automatically on restart. The menu bar should have nothing on the Spotlight side except Spotlight. If something does appear, find out if it is still checked in System Prefs or is listed in your System Prefs->Accounts->Login items and remove it. Once it starts clean, without anything up there except Spotlight, see if Spotlight now works correctly. If it does you know there is a conflict. Add your menu bar items back one at a time, try the items function, then try Spotlight. Eventually you will discover which item it is that is causing the problem. The only solution is not use that menu bar item.
Francine


Francine
Schwieder

Can't believe that not anyone from Apple has responded to this problem. I updated via System Update and now I'm having this problem. I can't log in, I have used Disk Repair, but no avail. Problem seems to be Spotlight, but I can't do anything, but to acces my HD through another computer. Deleting the user-cache doesn't work either.
Apple, do you have a solution?

As well as macjack's suggestions, there is also this file you can try deleting:

"/Users/yourname/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist"

I have not run the Security Updates (and don't plan to, I generally wait until they are part of a complete OS update, and 10.4.9 will be along Any Day Now), so I can't comment on whether they could have messed up something. I did look at the things that SystemUIServer is using in ActivityMonitor (select a running process, click the Inspect icon, then click the "Open Files and Ports" tab to see what's what) and I see that SystemUIServer is consulting two things involving Security:

/System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Versions/A/Security
/System/Library/Frameworks/SecurityInterface.framework/Versions/A/SecurityInterf ace

Both the Security and SecurityInterface binaries I have were last modified on Oct 4, 2006, which is when I ran the 10.4.8 update. You could check yours and see if they have been modified more recently.
Francine


Francine
Schwieder

Glad to hear that, dustdog!
Enjoy your Mac 🙂


-mj
macjack@gmail.com

I believe that is explained in The XLab Book