Two questions for the price of one.

Question One is about the little balloon that appears every now and then when I try to change one web page for another or make any sort of similar change to the appearance of the screen. I click on a link and the progress bar stays white. Also, the scroll bar down the right hand side, which is normally blue in colour, turns white and the mouse cursor changes to a spinning coloured disc. The disc can be there for anything from 20 seconds to 2 minutes before the scroll bar changes to blue, the progress bar gets to the end and the page changes. There is never an indication that there has been a problem loading the page.
I do scans with ClamxAV but everything is clear. I don't have any iffy programmes installed and I have no idea why I get the spinning beach ball.
Any ideas?

Question Two is a throwback to my PC days and is simply this .....
How can I tell exactly what programmes and processes are running at any given time? I'm hoping there is something along the lines of pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL on a PC to get lists up on screen.

Many thanks for any info or clues.
Steve

There are several ways to see what's running on your Mac, but I have to start by saying that if you don't already know, that's a problem of management.

The first method is to look at the Dock. All running programs will be there, with a white "dot" or "light" underneath them. If you have a lot of these, you are probably not quitting programs correctly. Closing them (red button) is not the same as quitting them (as it is in Windows). This eats RAM and resources, so learn to properly quit programs you're not using (command-q or the application menu).

Another method is to press command-tab, which presents you with a visual strip of all running programs (and lets you select which one has "focus" by using the arrow keys). While keeping your thumb on command, you can move your middle finger over to the "q" and quit programs.

Yet another way is to press what you call "the cmd-alt-delete" of the Mac, which is cmd-alt(option)-escape. This will preset you with a box of running programs, and you can FORCE QUIT programs from here. However, this is NOT recommended unless the program has become unresponsive.

Finally, if you want to get a full and complete look at all running processes, there is an app in your Utility folder called Activity Monitor. Be VERY cautious in killing processes, basically if you're not 100% certain about what the process does and why its doing it, DON'T kill it.

And I won't even get into how one does this in the Terminal.

I may have some answers for you - but it will cost you four times as much. ;D

1) What browser are you using? I have run into the same issue in Safari when loading a web page that uses Flash. My wife plays a lot of FaceBook games on our iMac (and MacBook Pro) and those sites take sometimes as long as two minutes to load. Really annoying. The flip side of that is I also use Firefox - and while the pages load faster, sometimes the Flash doesn't work properly. So, double check the web page that you are going to and see if it is Flash intensive. If so, there isn't much you can do but wait.

2) This is an easier one. If you are running Snow Leopard (which I see by your signature, you are), go to you /Applications/Utilities and you will find an icon for Activity Monitor. If you use it often, drag it to your dock. You can also download atMonitor 2.1.5 from Apple (same thing only on steroids).

Hope this helped!

5tevie said:

Question One is about the little balloon that appears every now and then when I try to change one web page for another or make any sort of similar change to the appearance of the screen. I click on a link and the progress bar stays white. Also, the scroll bar down the right hand side, which is normally blue in colour, turns white and the mouse cursor changes to a spinning coloured disc. The disc can be there for anything from 20 seconds to 2 minutes before the scroll bar changes to blue, the progress bar gets to the end and the page changes. There is never an indication that there has been a problem loading the page.
I do scans with ClamxAV but everything is clear. I don't have any iffy programmes installed and I have no idea why I get the spinning beach ball.
Any ideas?

Click to expand...

The ClamxAV is a waste of time, there aren't any Mac viruses -- or for that matter any known malware of any kind that would produce those symptoms.

The usual cause of beachballs when web surfing is Flash, usually loading ads from remote servers.

Another factor could be a) your cache is corrupt, b) you're running out of HD space, c) you don't have enough RAM. These are unlikely but possible.

You can try turning off Flash entirely (using something like Click To Flash) and see if that helps. My guess is that it will.

Thanks very much for the quick replies and info.
Chas ... I knew about the white dot under the icons in the dock but I was wondering if OS X had other stuff running in the background. I must admit to being guilty of hitting the red circle at top left to shut stuff down so I must learn how to close a programme so that it really is closed.
I'm still learning so I'll leave your last 2 options for years to come.

The browser is the latest version of Firefox although I also have Safari installed even though it is never used. It's just there as a kind of backup if Firefox ever goes belly up.

The Clam thing may be a waste of time but I have it running, not for me and my Mac but for the other Windows computers that are on my home network.
Cache corrupt? ..... Can I empty it out like in Windows?
I have 197 GB of space left on the hard drive.
Also, if I turn off Flash altogether, what will I miss out on?

Thanks a lot for the info, guys.
Steve

5tevie said:

Thanks very much for the quick replies and info.
Chas ... I knew about the white dot under the icons in the dock but I was wondering if OS X had other stuff running in the background. I must admit to being guilty of hitting the red circle at top left to shut stuff down so I must learn how to close a programme so that it really is closed.
I'm still learning so I'll leave your last 2 options for years to come.

The browser is the latest version of Firefox although I also have Safari installed even though it is never used. It's just there as a kind of backup if Firefox ever goes belly up.

The Clam thing may be a waste of time but I have it running, not for me and my Mac but for the other Windows computers that are on my home network.
Cache corrupt? ..... Can I empty it out like in Windows?
I have 197 GB of space left on the hard drive.
Also, if I turn off Flash altogether, what will I miss out on?

Thanks a lot for the info, guys.
Steve

Click to expand...

No need to click the red circle when quitting. As you've discovered that only closes the open window, not the active application. Command+Q or click on the app name in the menu bar and select "Quit".

You can empty the cache in your browser. I don't use F.F. but in Safari it is in the menu bar. Again by clicking on "Safari" and selecting "Empty cache". Probably the same in F.F.

Click to Flash only blocks flash from auto-running when you navigate to a website with it on there. You will see a grey box with the word "Flash" (or sometimes no words) in the center. If you do in fact want to view that flash content, simply click on "Flash" and it will run like normal. It is more or less manual control over what flash content is allowed to run.

Mostly what you'll "miss out on" is blinky flashy annoying as heck ADS. But ClickToFlash will also block other more proper uses of Flash (videos, games) until you click to enable them (thus the name). You can also "whitelist" sites that you don't want ClickToFlash to block at all.

Most if not all of the major video sites now offer HTML 5 as an alternative player, so the situation is getting a lot better on the video front. Flash is still very useful for other things, but I find that MOST of the time it just blocks/obfuscates the content I'm trying to get to, so I don't miss it at all.