[OT] Looking For OS X Troubleshooting Suggestions

[Paul Hibbert]

Scott,

From my own experience I would totally agree with Bob. I'm also pretty sure you can install a copy of your OS on a USB memory stick, you may need a reasonable size stick, but they are not too expensive now and it should help you determine where the error lies, you'll also see how fast the OS boots and runs with a solid state drive too.

Some info here: http://macs.about.com/od/diyguidesprojects/ss/usbflash_4.htm

I would also check Activity Monitor > CPU tab, view Active Processes, sort by %CPU to see what is taking most CPU cycles, some apps can make your Mac go crazy, Adobe updater is my pet hate.

I use TechTool Pro & ProToGo to keep my Macs running healthy and it certainly helped last time I had this issue, hope you resolve it soon.

Paul

 
On 2012-09-13, at 8:52 AM, Bob Sneidar wrote:

> Scott, your hard drive is failing. What happens is, when the OS detects a bad block or sector on the hard drive, there are routines in place to attempt to move the data to another location. This is a very high priority system event, even higher than mouse clicks. You will not be able to interact with anything while this is going on. 
> 
> It is recurring because the attempt has failed. You need to back up what you can, I recommend a great utility called Chronosync which has a feature to ignore errors, and then replace the drive. Carbon Copy Cloner is also a good choice even though it is paid software, because it will make a full bootable backup to another drive, and can make scheduled new and changed backups with old file archiving. 
> 
> Bob
> 
> 
> On Sep 12, 2012, at 9:02 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...
>> 
>> Thanks for any suggestions.
>> 
>> Best Regards,
>> 
>> Scott Rossi
>> Creative Director
>> Tactile Media, UX Design
>> 
>> 
>> 
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