Beach Ball too Often

S

soulartist

Registered
G4 733 768 RAM 10.4.3

For the first time this past week I noticed the dreaded beach ball while working in various apps (Word, Entourage, Safari) and none of them were intensive as in Photoshops filters - so it must be system wide. I did many of the recommended tests and fixes - permissions, cache cleaning, smart tests, processor and memory tests - everthing seems to be in order - and the issue continues at sporadic intervals. When the ball spins I cannot access a force quit. When the ball stops, everything is okay.

Suggestions to fix this nuisance are appreciated.
 
Enough free HD space? I'd make sure that after a reboot, at least 5 GB are free.
 
Yes, over 6GB available on this partition; I have two internal drives. I unchecked the put to sleep hardrive feature, but that had no effect, either.
 
I have also tried logging in under a new user account, and it did seem to resolve the issue. But after a while that did not work either. Beach ball appeared again - for no apparent reason.
 
Keep "Activity Monitor" open and see what application(s) are on top CPU useage when the beachball kicks in. Maybe that'll give you a clue about where to start looking...
 
I tried your suggestion. I was working in Word and the ball appeared. Word then disappeared from the Activity Monitor leaving the next active app Entourae showing at the top. After the ball stopped, Word reappeard at the top in the Activity Monitor. So, I don't know what it causing this processer intensive action. I also tried working with only one app open - Word - and my DSL off, but the same issue arises.
 
delete and rebuild Spotlight's Index and see if that helps;

In Terminal;

sudo mdutil -E /

Or just turn indexing off for awhile;

sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name
 
Hello. I looked at the activity monitor again, and it seems that Kernal task root suddently jumps to highest cpu usage when beach ball appears. Is this related to your spotlight suggestion?

Thanks.
 
Okay, I will. But I have two internal hard drives with four partitions on each … so how would I go about turning indexing off?
 
Using the mdutil command-line utility in Terminal, turn off indexing for each of your drives. Example:
• $ sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_1
• $ sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_2
2) Then use mdutil to remove the indexes from each drive
• $ sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_1
• $ sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_2
3) Physically remove the .Spotlight directories from the root of each drive.
• $ cd /
• $ sudo rm -fr .Spotlight-V100
(do the same for your second or third drive)
Make sure to carefully type the "rm" command -- a typo could result in deletion of critical files.
4) Use mdutil again to turn indexing back on for each drive
• $ sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_1
• $ sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_2
5) Spotlight will now re-index all drives and should behave in a normal fashion. (No longer uses 60%-80% of your CPU)
 
I have this info from Xlab:

If you open Activity Monitor, the process mds is active when Spotlight is either indexing or searching. The mdimport process is also active during indexing.

Neither of these processes show up in the Activity Monitor when the ball striikes. So, should I still go ahead with Spotlight?
 
It _could_ still be the culprit... However it also seems as if the first time, Entourage was "simply" trying to get mail when the beachball kicked in. Can you keep Entourage down (i.e. not running) for a couple of hours and see if that solves the problem?
 
Okay.

But this step is unclear to me: how do I designate which drive?

3) Physically remove the .Spotlight directories from the root of each drive.
• $ cd /
• $ sudo rm -fr .Spotlight-V100
(do the same for your second or third drive)
 
After a bit of time with no beach ball, the issue has returned, and now about every 15 to 20 minutes, or so.

Suggestions please.
 
Turn Spotlight off and leave if off and see if it helps;

sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/your_hard_drive_name_1
 
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