Beach Ball too Often

[bobw]

Starting up into Safe Mode does three things to simplify the startup and operation of your computer:

It forces a directory check of the startup volume.
It loads only required kernel extensions (some of the items in /System/Library/Extensions).
It runs only Apple-installed startup items (some of the items in /Library/StartupItems and /System/Library/StartupItems - and different than login items).
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger only: It disables all fonts other than those in /System/Library/Fonts .
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger only: It moves to the Trash all font caches normally stored in /Library/Caches/com.apple.ATS/(uid)/ , where (uid) is a user ID number such as 501.
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger only: It disables any Login Items.

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Try moving the Fonts folder from User>Library to the desktop and restart.

 

[soulartist]

Thanks for the info.

This may not be the cause for my beach ball, but …

Using FontDoctor, I was able to repair fonts in various areas. In the system/library/fonts, however, although I was able to repair this font after moving it to the desktop, but cannot place it back into the same folder - message says I don't have sufficient priviledges for this font.

These hese fonts were diagnosed as having Font ID Conflicts-
Lucida Grande CE

 

[soulartist]

I appreciate all your suggestions.

The solution:

As it turned out, I had inadvertanly set up Techtool Pro to check SMART status every half hour—which, for some reason, was also active when logging in as new user.

Pilot error.