05-16-2011, 07:57 PM

It just started on almost everything I do when using Safari - very annoying. What is it telling me and how do I fix it?

Tom

05-16-2011, 08:44 PM

Do you have any add-ins installed for Safari? Anything changed recently in terms of software you've installed?

05-17-2011, 03:06 PM

Originally Posted by cwa107

Do you have any add-ins installed for Safari? Anything changed recently in terms of software you've installed?

Nope, Safari is 100% Apple. When this has happened no other apps are open either.

I've Googled this and found it funny that this is called the "Beach Ball Of Death" BBOD.

Guess Apple and MS both have their little "features" as I'm now learning.

Tom

05-17-2011, 03:09 PM

What does your Activity Monitor say? (Applications -> Utilities -> Activity Monitor.app) Open it while Safari is running and sort it so that you can look at the percentage of CPU usage.

05-17-2011, 03:22 PM

Originally Posted by chscag

What does your Activity Monitor say? (Applications -> Utilities -> Activity Monitor.app) Open it while Safari is running and sort it so that you can look at the percentage of CPU usage.

Don't forget to select " All Processes " in the top right hand corner of activity monitor, so yo see all processes.

Cheers ... McBie

05-17-2011, 08:03 PM

Originally Posted by TomServo

It just started on almost everything I do when using Safari - very annoying. What is it telling me and how do I fix it?

The rotating beachball is a "wait cursor." It comes up whenever you
have to wait a pre-determined amount of time before the requested
function will be finished. If it comes up too often and remains too
long, it is usually a sign that something is hogging CPU time in the
background. It can be caused by a buggy driver, a corrupted
application or database, or a utility that isn't compatible with
your version of OS X (e.g. a Safari plug-in that needs to be updated).

If you are getting the rotating beachball in Safari, there are a couple of simple things to try right off the bat that will more than likely fix the problem.

In Safari, go into the Safari menu and choose "Reset Safari". UNcheck Remove All Cookies, Removed Saved Names and Passwords, and Remove Other Autofill Form Text. Leave everything else checked. Click on Reset, and let Safari have a few seconds to recover.

Now do this:

Quit Safari. Navigate to:

On your desktop:
[hard drive icon] --> Users folder --> [your user name] --> Library --> Preferences

Now, in this Preferences folder, find this file:
com.apple.quicktime.plugin.preferences.plist
and drag it to the trash. (Don't worry, you don't need it. It will automatically be replaced with a fresh version the next time you launch Safari.)

Now, launch Safari and see if things are all better. Please let us know!

05-19-2011, 11:46 AM

Originally Posted by Randy B. Singer

The rotating beachball is a "wait cursor." It comes up whenever you
have to wait a pre-determined amount of time before the requested
function will be finished. If it comes up too often and remains too
long, it is usually a sign that something is hogging CPU time in the
background. It can be caused by a buggy driver, a corrupted
application or database, or a utility that isn't compatible with
your version of OS X (e.g. a Safari plug-in that needs to be updated).

If you are getting the rotating beachball in Safari, there are a couple of simple things to try right off the bat that will more than likely fix the problem.

In Safari, go into the Safari menu and choose "Reset Safari". UNcheck Remove All Cookies, Removed Saved Names and Passwords, and Remove Other Autofill Form Text. Leave everything else checked. Click on Reset, and let Safari have a few seconds to recover.

Now do this:

Quit Safari. Navigate to:

On your desktop:
[hard drive icon] --> Users folder --> [your user name] --> Library --> Preferences

Now, in this Preferences folder, find this file:
com.apple.quicktime.plugin.preferences.plist
and drag it to the trash. (Don't worry, you don't need it. It will automatically be replaced with a fresh version the next time you launch Safari.)

Now, launch Safari and see if things are all better. Please let us know!

Thanks for the detailed response, I'm working shift work and haven't touched my iMac since I posted this (responding from work). I'll tackel this this weekend.

Again thanks for the responses and I'll report back as to the status of my problem after I run these procedures.

Cheers

Tom

05-20-2011, 06:55 AM

Randy, I followed your instructions and with only an hour or so of stick time in Safari I can report that the "beach ball" has not reappeared.

It'll be a few more days before I'll be able to spend hours on my iMac, but so far it's running as before.

Too bad I don't have a clue what was wrong with my iMac or what your fixes did, but thanks.

Tom

05-20-2011, 05:23 PM

Originally Posted by TomServo

Too bad I don't have a clue what was wrong with my iMac or what your fixes did, but thanks.

Apparently there was nothing wrong with your iMac other than a problem with Safari.

Safari is an excellent Web browser...one of the fastest browsers available. Unfortunately the program isn't terribly good about managing memory. Every now and then it will corrupt its cache, or some preferences. The procedures that I had you follow cleared those things up.

The bad news is that, in time, Safari will need the same treatment again. So keep my instructions on how to fix things handy. The good news is that fixing Safari is fast and easy.

Enjoy.

09-26-2011, 03:00 AM

Hi Randy

Your response to the colour wheel was very helpful and I followed the instructions. However, when I went into the Safari menu to Uncheck the boxes you mentioned - I don't have a "Remove all Cookies" box. I did everything else and I now have Safari running much quicker than before, but the spinning wheel is still coming up. Can you help?

Thanks
Pippad

09-26-2011, 04:19 AM

Originally Posted by Pippad

Hi Randy

Your response to the colour wheel was very helpful and I followed the instructions. However, when I went into the Safari menu to Uncheck the boxes you mentioned - I don't have a "Remove all Cookies" box. I did everything else and I now have Safari running much quicker than before, but the spinning wheel is still coming up. Can you help?

Some background information would help me help you. Most of the following can be found under:
Apple menu --> About this Mac --> More Info

Which version of the Mac OS are you running?

Which model of Macintosh are you running, and from what year?

How much RAM is installed?

How big is your hard drive, and how full is it?

In System Preferences --> Accounts --> Login Items
what's listed?

09-28-2011, 08:14 AM

Originally Posted by Pippad

Hi Randy

Your response to the colour wheel was very helpful and I followed the instructions. However, when I went into the Safari menu to Uncheck the boxes you mentioned - I don't have a "Remove all Cookies" box. I did everything else and I now have Safari running much quicker than before, but the spinning wheel is still coming up. Can you help?

Okay, I have one more thing for you to try.

In addition to regular cookies, there is a less-known type of cookie called a Flash cookie. Lately I've heard from some folks who have literally thousands of them. All of these Flash cookies brought their browser to a crawl.

So, let's try this...

Download:

Flush (free)
Flush.app – Flash Cookie Removal Tool For OS X | MacHacks.TV

and run it. There is nothing else that you have to do. It will list all of the Flash cookies that it clears out. Clearing your Flash cookies shouldn't hurt anything.

Let me know if this helps!

09-28-2011, 09:46 AM

Hi Randy

Sorry for the delay in replying to you - I think I have the info you asked for.

We have an iMac OS X 10,1 from 2009 with 4GB of RAM. In About this Mac I went to the Serial-ATA section and it says there is 999.86GB capacity with 886.41GB available (hopefully this is something to do with the hard drive?!) and in the System Pref section the following 2 things are listed: Canon IJ Network Scanner and iTunes Helper.

I've seen your second response re the flash cookie removal tool - if this really won't hurt my Mac I'll try it as the wheel really is annoying!

Thanks
Pippa
(P.S. you may have gathered I'm not very computer savvy so thanks for the explanations!)

09-28-2011, 10:56 PM

Originally Posted by Pippad

I've seen your second response re the flash cookie removal tool - if this really won't hurt my Mac I'll try it as the wheel really is annoying!

The worst that I've heard can happen is that you may need to reset some of the preference settings for a Web site that you visit often, such as Pandora.

Yes, I do recommend that you run it.

Please let me know the results.

(Have I previously suggested uninstalling Flash itself, and then reinstalling the latest version?)

09-29-2011, 08:40 AM

I'm going to try this too. When using Safari and using yahoo mail it freezes up. Maybe this will help.
Thanks for the info.