Spinning Beach Ball in Finder every few minutes ?!

wicky

wicky

play thing
I’ve just purchased a Mac Mini running the latest version of Mavericks. Everything is up to date in terms of the OS & bundled Mac software. In addition I have Adobe CC and a small number of other applications.

The machine’s speed seems adequate for my needs, but it’s almost unusable because of the spinning Beach Ball. **Everytime** I touch a finder window after using another application the machine inexplicably hangs for 30-60 seconds (only in Finder).

An example of how bad it is…

Moving files to the new computer I decided to re-organise my projects folder. Previously the 230 folders were organised by job number, but I decided to put them into logical groups organised by client (no renaming just putting 10 folders, or so, into a containing folder with the client’s name). The job should have taken 5 minutes max, but so far it’s take over 1.5 hours!!!

A little online research has shown that I’m not the only person suffering form his but I’m yet to find a solution. Is this common, and is there a way to repair the issue without sending the computer back to Apple?

The machine is a Mac Mini, 2.3 Quad Core i7. I’ve added 16gb of crucial RAM, which appears to be fine when running diagnostics.

Any help would be great.

Thanks.
 
Are you quitting applications when you are done using them? An annoying part of Mavericks (some may call it a bug) is that apps will hide when not being used, but they will NOT show up in the dock as being open.
Go to The Apple Menu and select Force Quit. You will see a list of apps that are open. Quitting them from Force Quit won’t hurt them and maybe your finder will find the memory source to work quicker.
 
Open the Activity Monitor in Applications / Utilities and watch %CPU and Memory when the beachball spins. This may give you a hint as to the culprit.

I recently noticed a CPU hog on my machine - Google Drive! I killed it off and the load is much lower.
 
And another thing--it sounds like you have added a substantial number of files to your hard drive. Be sure to maintain at least 10% of your hard drive capacity as free space.
 
Thanks all for your feedback

To clarify…

  • The problem is persistent regardless of other open apps. It still happens after a reboot with zero none-system apps open.
  • Activity monitor shows no significant usage issues. The largest CPU% is Finder, WindowServer & the Activity Monitor app.
  • I have added many files, but still only using 15% of the 1TB HD. Very few apps have been installed (not even using email).
  • I have waited until everything is fully indexed, but the problem persists.

Activity Monitor:
When finder times-out/hangs Activity Monitor displays “Finder (Not Responding)” in red until Finder starts working again which takes about 30-60 seconds.

The problem is so consistent I can easily predict it happening with about 90% accuracy. It’s terrible.
 
wicky said:
Thanks all for your feedback

To clarify…

  • The problem is persistent regardless of other open apps. It still happens after a reboot with zero none-system apps open.
  • Activity monitor shows no significant usage issues. The largest CPU% is Finder, WindowServer & the Activity Monitor app.
  • I have added many files, but still only using 15% of the 1TB HD. Very few apps have been installed (not even using email).
  • I have waited until everything is fully indexed, but the problem persists.

Activity Monitor:
When finder times-out/hangs Activity Monitor displays “Finder (Not Responding)” in red until Finder starts working again which takes about 30-60 seconds.

The problem is so consistent I can easily predict it happening with about 90% accuracy. It’s terrible.
Click to expand...

Did you try the old trick on going to ~/Library/Preferences/ and throw out the com.apple.finder.plist to see if it helps?
 
Satcomer said:
Did you try the old trick on going to ~/Library/Preferences/ and throw out the com.apple.finder.plist to see if it helps?
Click to expand...

Yes, I had already tried that without success but thanks for the suggestion.

I think I may have sorted it now… but my confidence has been undermined so I’ll have to see how it goes over the next day or two.

The hardware diagnostic reported no errors with both the standard & extended versions, so I figured it can only be a software incompatibility. This is what I did…

  • I removed ALL non-essential software and emptied the trash (tedious)
  • Re-booted in Safe Mode
  • Removed all login items from my account
  • Trashed file: ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
  • Trashed folder: /Library/LaunchAgents
  • Trashed folder: /Library/LaunchDaemons
  • Re-booted as normal

That appeared to work!!

I then added what I regard as essential apps: AdobeCC, Wacom Cintiq software, Dropbox, etc., and after a few tests added less important software such as LibreOffice, Alfred2, etc. The problem returned and I went through the same cycle a few more times testing different configurations.

Can’t say exactly what was causing the issue but I suspect the current Wacom Cintiq driver (6.3.8-2) is partly at fault. I’ve installed an older driver, so fingers crossed it will be more stable.
 
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