Application (not responding)

Hi, i have an annoying problem and wondered if anyone has the answer...

On many applications, i get the spinning beach ball for several mins, and the computer is in a "crashed" state. I have to keep force quit open in the corner of my screen now so i don't have to wait. The apps are shown as (not responding) during the spinning beach ball's spinning, and i think the computer is generally just running slow. This all just happened quite suddenly, it feels like i have a virus or something but i have done some checks and found nothing...

Some applications with problems are safari (especially on sites with java eg. eBay) , firefox, photoshop, messenger for mac, disk utility (when trying to do something about the problem)

I have tried some of the troubleshooting options in the sticky thread, but none help.

Any help or ideas greatly appreciated! thanks

Not a virus in all probability but your network is set up poorly and all the beach ball is telling you is that it is taking a while to resolve conflicting settings

thanks for the reply.

What do you mean by conflicting settings? and do you know what i can do to resolve this?

Since you have issues with apps (like photoshop and disk utility) that have nothing to do with your network settings; worst case - you could have a drive with the beginning signs of a failure.

I'd reboot with your original disk and run Disk Utiltiy to have it verify and repair the drive. Here's a walkthrough of the process.

What Mac do you have?
How much memory does it have?
What size is your hard drive and how much free space is remaining?
Is the drive making any clicking noises?

When i open disk utility, the option to repair disk is greyed out for some reason.

I'm pretty sure i don't have an "Apple Software Restore disc (included with newer Macs) or a Mac OS X Install disc" which the instructions mention so i don't really no what to do.

I have a macbook white, leopard 10.5.8
Memory 4gb
Hard drive 150gb used , 80gb free
And no clicking noises

The software restore disks were included with your machine if you bought it new. You need your disk.

I bought it new last year, and i didn't have to use a disk to install as far as i remember. I have the box but it is empty apart from some polystyrene packaging.

edit : i've found the disks i'll try it now.

thanks

(un)fortunately according to disk utility the disk appears to be ok.

However i did notice that when i pressed repair disk permissions, a list of the disk permission errors came up each time, and didn't seem to be repaired.

anything else i should do?

Are you sure you didn't just verify? If you didn't and DU couldn't fix all the permissions, try repairing the disk permissions again.

I repaired permissions multiple times and there are still a few erors which come up each time and arent fixed. Could this be the root of the problems maybe?

It's possible that fsck may be better able to fix any errors/permission problems. Follow the guide here to restart in single-user mode and run fsck. The instructions are about halfway down the page but reading the whole thing can't hurt.

Pop in your install disk and reboot. Immediately after the chimes hold down the 'C" button, and go to Utilities in the Menu Bar and Run Repair Disk from there. If all is a-okay reboot and hold down 'D' which will load Apple Hardware Test and run that over the machine.

Keep us posted on results?

Well the disk repair said the disk was fine, and so did the hardware test (though i only did the 3 minute one, not the hour one). The problems still persist... mostly now only on the internet though

Get on to your ISP and see if you can download Network set up instructions as Collin said appears you have network problems. Are you using wireless and what does DNS settings say under System, Preferences > Network > Advanced > DNS?