Beach ball flickering

Hi - after searching the forums, i couldnt find anybody with exactly the same problem, so is this happening to anyone else?

When I get the beach ball (which comes up much more than it seemed to in tiger), it often flickers - it goes slightly transparent for a split second a few times - it definitely looks very buggy, like there is something wrong with it, but doesnt seem to cause any problems. Never did this with Tiger.

I did a regular upgrade which went smoothly (despite a couple of bugs that i won't go into here ...). 3 month old mbp, 2gb ram, 120gb hd. I could do a clean install but from what i have read that doesnt seem to fix the problems for a lot of people, so i more tempted to wait for an update and see if that fixes anything before i go to all the effort ...

I have seen my 'beach ball' flicker when it comes up
I don't really care if it does or not

i guess it doesn't make any difference to performance, but it really gets my goat when i see it! especially since it didnt happen in tiger ...

I have now done a complete erase and install to get off on the best foot, and the beach ball is still flickering ... i can't believe more people don't have this problem ...

I hear you! I just Googled for the this issue and found your post. I have a 17" MBP and have had this bug/feature ever since upgrading to Leopard.

Steve = : ^ )

Maybe it has always flickered, but since you never saw it before Leopard, you never noticed it.

(I am being facetious!)

well, i still have this problem ... just trying to live with it ...

i have some other general performance issues that i am thinking of sending my mac back for ... i see the beachball way to much, have some programmes freeze/perform poorly, have system crashes and waking from sleep problems, keyboard problems ... all way too much for a new macbook pro.

do you have any other problems?

ali

Hi mr. bump.

Did you update to 10.5.1? A few problems were corrected with that upsdate.

Another thing to try is create a new user account (keep it as bare bones as you can so you can monitor the behaviour), see if the flickering and beachballs are happening in that new account as well.

I have a feeling this is just software incompatibility in your usual account, especially like that right after an Erase and Install. It hasn't been used long enough to be corrupted data and it would be a real coincidence if it were signs of failing hardware.

Hi macheadcase,

i have updated to 10.5.1, and also tried logging in with a new user account - same thing, comes up straight away. I have been quite a few forums trying to find solutions, and nobody seems to be able to come up with anything, i've even tried to see if it could be a font management problem or something like that. (see http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=81387&goto=nextoldest, http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5789991#5789991, http://www.macusersforum.com/index.php?showtopic=19515)

Apart from the flickering beach ball, i had similar poor system performance problems while still on tiger, (as mentioned in my previous post) which makes me think i may have some kind of hardware problem. but i need my mac for work, so finding a time to send it off is tricky ... (not that i can be sure it will do any good!)

Well if you've had quirky behaviour with the Mac under Tiger as well, it could very well be hardware related then. From your opening post, I thought you hadn't had any problems with it before so I wrongly assumed the problem was software related.

Nothing other to do here than take it in for repairs. You could always run the Apple Hardware Test on it in Extended Test mode if you have the time but the results aren't very accurate if the problem is intermittent.

yeah, i think you are right - i have actually run a hardware test as well and returned no problems ...

the flickering beach ball has only come along since leopard but general performance has not been satisfactory the whole time i have had the mac.

thanks for the help!

No problem.

Do keep us up to date with the outcome of this situation. Good luck!