Swirling Rainbow Circle, Why? Please Help.

Hello everyone,

I bought a MacBook Pro at the start of the year, January 26th to be exact. I used it for a while, updated my computer regularly, and one day I started to get this "Swirling Rainbow Circle". My computer is completely useless when this S.R.C. comes about. It is like my computer is trying to load something, but I don't know what it is trying to load that would make it freeze anywhere from 15 seconds to over a minute. It is totally random too. It doesn't matter if I am online or completely disconnected from the internet. I sometimes still have audio when it freezes. I have looked numerous places for information but have yet to stumble upon anything. Could someone please tell me what it is? and why this is happening?

By the way, I have already learned a tonne from this site.

Could be almost anything:

- not enough ram
- too many applications open at the same time
- hard drive getting full
- haven't restarted the computer in a while
- haven't repaired permissions in a while
- computer OS could be doing it's periodic maintenance
- etc.

- Nick

Hard to say without a few more specifics. I would note specifically what programs are open (have blue dots under them in the Dock) when the problem occurs.

You can also open Activity Monitor (Applications => Utilities) and sort by CPU utilization to see which process(es) are using the most CPU.

Another place to check is "Console" (Applications => Utilities). If you're seeing a particular process erroring out at lot in the System log, chances are it's causing the problem.

Ok, more specific.

I just found this about 10minutes ago on the console.

10-09-14 8:15:52 PM mds[27] (Error) LSOF: File '/private/var/run/utmpx' (fd=4) left open on device 234881025

So what is mds? I know its process number is 27 and I am currently looking for more information on it.

Hi guys,

I own a 15" macbook pro purchased late 2009 and over the last few months have noticed the spinning circle very regularly whenever I'm surfing various webpages and Safari in general. It will last up to a minute in some cases.

The same issue occurs when running applications, although I went to the Apple store and was told there's nothing they can see wrong with my computer (they ran an analysis)

Does anyone else have this happen and do you know of any bugs or updates that may fix this problem?

same here

I have a 2009 mac book pro, about 8months old, and I'm having the exact same problem.

I've check all the ram, space, cpu and I have plenty of it. It doesn't matter whether I'm on the Internet or just opening a pic - the spinning circle can last for up to a minute.

Help!

Console

My console reads this, about 15 times just tonight 21/9/10

21/09/10 6:38:23 PM Finder[85] --ImageKit Error: Invalid truncation for , index=17

As well as this, about 15 times also...

21/09/10 11:06:23 PM com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[393] 2010-09-21 23:06:23.910 ReportCrash[393:2803] Saved crash report for WDSmartWareD[389] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/WDSmartWareD_2010-09-21-230623_localhost.crash

21/09/10 11:11:08 PM WDSmartWareD[394] WDSmartWareD(394,0xb08b2000) malloc: *** mmap(size=2097152) failed (error code=12)
*** error: can't allocate region
*** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug


Thoughts??

Please do not double post. Always post back to the same thread.