[OT] Looking For OS X Troubleshooting Suggestions

[Terry Judd]

On 13/09/2012, at 02:02 PM, Scott Rossi wrote:

> Hi List:
> 
> Apologies for posting something other than a EULA opinion, but I'm wondering
> if someone might have some experience with an OS X system that is throwing
> random beachballs all over the place (10.6.8).  Scroll a list of files in
> the Finder = beachball; launch an application = beachball; create a new
> email message = beachball.  I've used Disk Utility to repair the disk and
> permissions (nothing major appeared to be found).  I've run a test on RAM
> using MemTest, with apparently no problems found.  I've been watching
> Activity Monitor to see if there's anything sucking up processor use --
> nothing appears to be out of the ordinary (that I know of).  I'm now trying
> an app called Onyx to see if it will find anything worth addressing.
> 
> Short of reinstalling the system (days worth of labor), I'm at a loss for
> what else to try.  The one thing I found online is that the Spotlight
> indexing process can sometimes go crazy and intermittently bog down the
> processor -- Onyx supposedly allows you to disable this but I'm not certain
> this is the problem (not a regular culprit in Activity Monitor).
> 
> Not sure if this means anything but apparently I can't reset PRAM on the
> system (Intel Mac Mini).  I've tried several times with multiple keyboards,
> without success.  I believe with Lion and above maybe this is supposed to be
> unnecessary, but it's supposed to work with Snow Leopard and earlier, yes?
> 
> Anybody have any ideas for something else to look for?  I know some of you
> do more low level tinkering than I.  Restarts help for a while, but I can
> only restart the system so many times...
> 

Sounds bad. In my experience Disk Utility seems incapable of recognising, let alone diagnosing or fixing, lots of major system level problems. I had 5 hard disks, a logic board and a replacement battery fail within 12 months on my MacBook Pro and not once did it tell me that anything was wrong (kernel panic, what kernel panic).

There are probably better diagnostic tools out there but I'm not really in a position to recommend any of them (anyone?). I'd be leaning towards a reinstall but let's face it there's no guarantee that that will fix your problem.

Sorry, that didn't really help at all did it?

Good luck!

Terry...

> Thanks for any suggestions.
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> Scott Rossi
> Creative Director
> Tactile Media, UX Design
> 
> 
> 
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Dr Terry Judd
Senior Lecturer in Medical Education
Medical Eduction Unit
Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry & Health Sciences
The University of Melbourne