New macbook pro and the rainbow pinwheel

cymrugirl

I've had my mbp for a week now and the last few days, it's getting a little slow eg. when surfing the web, when I try to scroll down, I get the pinwheel coming up for a few seconds. I checked the activity monitor and it all seems to look ok. I thought it might be firefox but same thing happens in safari. I normally have thunderbird running but even with just the browser up, I still get the odd pinwheel. I have ad-block on firefox and I don't use time machine. Bluetooth is also turned off.
It can happen when I open other apps like iphoto. I only have the base model and haven't upgraded yet.

These are the apps I've installed since I got it:
Firefox
Thunderbird
Neo Office
Handbrake
Mac the ripper
Gimp
Picasa uploader
Fugu
VLC

Any tips on what I should be looking out for (i'm a new convert so be gentle )? I've had a look at what should launch at startup and only itunes helper is listed. I've also run the system update and am up to date. Or is all this just normal??? It's not like it's hanging for a long time but would have thought it wouldn't occur that often.

almillar

I certainly get that when opening iPhoto, just for a sec. Just in case you didn't know, the 'spinning beachball' as it's sometimes called is usually specific to the program, and you can still use the rest of your computer fine. Eg if you get it on firefox, the beachball will be there if you're over the firefox window, but move the cursor off and you're back to normal. Even when the beachball is there, you can still quit the application in the dock, it does respond to clicks.

cymrugirl

Usually using the computer is fine but I do get the odd freeze as well. I can move the mouse but no programs will respond. Takes from 10secs to a minute to unfreeze again. That doesn't happen a lot but seems a bit unusual when I'm only running the web browser. I noticed some people are saying it could be due to the latest firmware update?

Scrilla

I've recently bought a MacBook Pro as well and I had the same issue. It would just freeze and pinwheel for apparently no reason (like you, activity monitor shows nothing out of the ordinary). I'm a long time Mac user so I knew this was definitely not normal behavior. The problem for me it seemed was Spotlight - the magnifying glass in the top right hand corner. I guess it's indexing was slowing the system down a lot. In my case, I had migrated all my old files from my old comp so indexing took a long time. After indexing, everything worked fine, although I've not had the freezing and pinwheeling before on older computers when spotlight was indexing from scratch.

Is spotlight indexing on your computer?
(You can tell by simply selecting the magnifying glass and it will say indexing).
If it is, perhaps leave it on one night (while you're asleep) just to let it finish indexing.

Another thought is maybe your programs are still building their cache databases. I find new programs are slower to use at first then get to full speed after the first few uses.

Leopard

The spinning beachball is frequently a sign that it's writing things to, or is retrieving things from, Virtual Memory or caches.

How much RAM do you have installed and what is the spin-speed of your hard drive?

It will be prone to system freezes if it gets too hot. Upon that point, incidentally, both my own MacBooks Pro (which are of June 2007 vintage) have been running notably hotter since, at the prompting of Apple's own "Software Update" utility in OS X, I downloaded and installed the MacBook Pro SMC Firmware Update 1.3 last May, which alters the fan behaviour.

cymrugirl

It's the base mbp model so:
2.2 GHz
2GB memory
160GB SATA 5400 rpm

I haven't noticed my mbp running hot....it doesn't seem to be doing much when the beachball comes up. It's a bit unpredictable as I can have a few apps open and it works fine but when I am just using the browser and open a new tab or just scrolling down the page, the beachball comes up.

Scrilla

If you continue to have problems, do the following:

Restart the computer. On the first chime, hold down "cmd-Alt-P-R". Let go once you hear the second startup chime and let the computer boot normally.

This resets the PRAM. Some of your settings in control panels may change (nothing major, things like time settings), but may help solve some of your problems.

Marty_J

My first thought would be Spotlight; as mentioned above, it indexes all your files (including their contents). The first indexing can take quite some time and is frequently the cause of new Mac users complaining that their computer seems a bit slow. Once it's done, files are indexed as they're written/modified.

Incidentally, you can get AdBlock for Safari. It's a much faster browser than Firefox.

And why Thunderbird and not Apple Mail?

cymrugirl

Couldn't get used to Apple Mail
It was easier to get my old emails over via thunderbird.

Leopard

What Scrilla and Marty J have posted is quite correct.

You'd really be wise to upgrade your RAM to 4 GB (2 x 2 GB), though. It doesn't cost much if you buy it from Crucial and you can install it yourself. Whatever Apple may claim, it's asking a lot of OS 10.5.7 to run it on just 2 GB in a 64 bit Mac: it hasn't got enough elbow room to use its full potential once you've loaded a few applications.

If you perform that upgrade, speeds will improve generally and usefully. Mine did. And you'll see far less of the spinning beachball, too.

(I asked about the spin-speed of your hard drive because if Virtual Memory is being used - which, with only 2 GB of RAM, it will be, a lot - a 7,200 rpm drive will run it more quickly than a 5,400 rpm drive.)

I've always found the charts here very helpful in determining what's worth upgrading to, and what isn't.

Mail and RSS files accumulate silently and take up memory.

If you've got a DotMac/MobileMe account at Apple, that will always be quietly synching in the background - and so will your iDisk.

And that's before you switch on Time Machine (which you should: it's well worth while and it's extremely helpful if you need to replace or rebuild a hard drive).

All in all, a lot goes on behind the scenes when your Mac is running...


I installed and run Janitor, every so often. It performs, manually, routine system and disk housekeeping tasks that a Mac performs daily and automatically at 3:15 am (by default) if it's left on overnight - but which don't get done if the Mac is switched off or asleep. Cleans out old temporary files, logs and such like which clog up the system.

Re-booting it once a day helps it to junk unnecessary stuff, too. I used to just put mine to sleep every night but now I switch it right off at night and restart it the next morning unless I've got some files open on my desktop that would be a nuisance to have to find and reload the next day.

This will help you keep an eye on temperatures inside the thing.

There's nothing wrong with Thunderbird but it's best to use Mail with a Mac because it integrates seamlessly with the other Apple software - such as iLife, iWork and Aperture - so, for example, you can just drag-and-drop stuff effortlessly into and out of emails.

Marty_J

cymrugirl wrote: »

Couldn't get used to Apple Mail
It was easier to get my old emails over via thunderbird.

This explains briefly how to use Apple Mail, but if you just don't like it, fair enough.

I like it a lot though, not least because I can use OS X's built-in dictionary and all that other good stuff.