Excessive Beachball

Hey guys.

I've had my macbook pro for about a month and a half now, and i love it! But recently, I've been noticing a bit of a degradation in performance which is weird. The most common problem is if I have about 3 or 4 tabs open in safari and I open a new one, my mac hangs, with the beachball there just spinning away for anything up to about a minute before it responds again. It can also happen in other ways, but the tab thing is way more common.

The MBP is the 13" 2GB version. I know it isn't the highest spec, but surely it shouldn't be hanging when opening a new tab? Is it a problem with my Macbook?

Thanks in advance guys.

Do you use Boot Camp?

It may be resolving a Network setting issue - some of those seem to take a liitle while to sort. Make sure your settings are all correct.

I'd start with repairing disk permissions... you could also try running Onyx or main menu as well.
Make sure that all the apps you have running are compatible and up to date as well, especially if you have windows running.

cwa107 asked if you have bootcamp, which if you do, it may be sucking up your Ram.
Ram is shared between the Mac and Windows, so if the processor is very busy on one side, there will be less processing available for the other.

Umm, 6string - bootcamp isn't a VM, so unless the OP has vmware fusion and is using it to boot into bootcamp, there would be no reason bootcamp would be using RAM while you are in OSX - there is no way to run both OS' at the same time with just bootcamp - you have to boot into one or the other (unless, as mentioned before you have a tool like vmware fusion that will allow you to use your bootcamp partition in a virtual machine).

You might want to read here: MacWindows: Running Windows on Intel Macs for more information about how bootcamp and osx are independent of each other without a 3rd party virtualization tool.

To the Op: what web pages do you have open at the time? Depending on the version of osx and safari, are you sure you don't have any plugins that may be incompatible? I have that problem myself usually when I have multiple tabs open on web pages that are flash laden...

6string said:

Ram is shared between the Mac and Windows, so if the processor is very busy on one side, there will be less processing available for the other.

Click to expand...

Yes, but bootcamp and the mac don't run at the same time, so i don't see how that would conflict???

My friend got a mac probably 2 months ago, and she told me the same thing...the computer locks up and the color wheel goes for about 30 seconds then stops and everything is fine...she told me this happens several times a day to...

I didn't ask if it was running with parallels, but I thought I did.
My mistake! (I was in the middle of responding to an email at the same time)

As for the first part of my post, I would try that and see if it helps.

Ok, that would make more sense I didn't know for sure if parallels could do bootcamp in a vm, so I didn't list it as a possibility on my post

Yep, the latest version of Parallels....
Quite often, I go back to my posts and read over them in case I missed something... so in this case, I'm glad you caught it

6string said:

I'd start with repairing disk permissions... you could also try running Onyx or main menu as well.
Make sure that all the apps you have running are compatible and up to date as well, especially if you have windows running.

cwa107 asked if you have bootcamp, which if you do, it may be sucking up your Ram.
Ram is shared between the Mac and Windows, so if the processor is very busy on one side, there will be less processing available for the other.

Click to expand...

I asked because I had similar symptoms when I first upgraded to 10.6. Excluding the Boot Camp partition from Spotlight indexing immediately cured them.

Good suggestion cwa107. When forced to run Windows I use Boot Camp so I didn't think of that. Also to those running virtual machines (Parallels or Fusion) isn't it possible that Time Machine is attempting to back up the virtual machine files these programs create? My understanding is that once these files are initially backed up by Time Machine the entire file must be backed up again anytime the files are opened. Apparently TM reads the file opening as a modification.

6string said:

cwa107 asked if you have bootcamp, which if you do, it may be sucking up your Ram.
Ram is shared between the Mac and Windows, so if the processor is very busy on one side, there will be less processing available for the other.

Click to expand...

cwa107 said:

I asked because I had similar symptoms when I first upgraded to 10.6. Excluding the Boot Camp partition from Spotlight indexing immediately cured them.

Click to expand...

I wasn't suggesting that was why you asked about bootcamp, if it read that way

Sheesh, everything I wrote in this post came out all wrong! Last time I respond to a post while distracted

Hiya, no bootcamp running here.

The applications I usually have open at one time are Mail, Adium and Safari. That's it.

It's really annoying because it used to load a new tab in a second.

Ill second the running repair disk permissions. You would be surprised at what it can fix up .... And mainmenu is brilliant as i paid for the app i was so impressed with it. But you can get it for free as a trial

Cheers

tattooedmac said:

Ill second the running repair disk permissions. You would be surprised at what it can fix up .... And mainmenu is brilliant as i paid for the app i was so impressed with it. But you can get it for free as a trial

Cheers

Click to expand...

You can download mainmenu 1.7.4 which is still free, but it takes a few attempts, as a lot of the links that say it's 1.7.4, download the latest version instead!

6string said:

You can download mainmenu 1.7.4 which is still free, but it takes a few attempts, as a lot of the links that say it's 1.7.4, download the latest version instead!

Click to expand...

Ahh there you go, and knowing my luck there probably not much difference between the two lol .... But as said im impressed with it, so me know complain.

Cheers

Just did the repair disk permissions thing, and it seems to have helped quite a bit. I'll keep you updated, and I'll also take a look at the Mainmenu thing.

Thans!