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Spinning Wheel..

995 views 5 replies 3 participants last post by  mguertin 
#1 ·
Hi Guys,

I did a quick search on this and didn't find anything so I hope this isn't a repeat of a topic already covered.

I have an early 2009 edition MacBook Pro, which came loaded with Leopard, the computer was running great! When Snow Leopard came out I upgraded my OS by doing a clean install on my computer, as far as I could tell the computer was still running great. Let's fast forward to around March or April, for some reason in Safari, now I get the spinning wheel of death, and it takes nearly 15-20 mins for me just to be able to go into Finder and kill Safari, and even then, it doesn't allow me to do that all the time.

I did a search on the web to find out what was going on, and apparently many people have had this issue once Safari went through it's latest update, in most cases the following steps were taken:

1. Clear browser cache and cookies
2. Clear P-ram
3. Create another user and see if the same issues are occuring

I've done all steps, and still have the same problem. In fact, I started using the new user account I created, and Safari has now started doing the same thing again with the wheel of death in the new account.

The only thing that seems to work, is an all out replacement of the hard drive. I'm out of warranty, and cannot extend using Applecare, I don't have a problem replacing the drive, but only if it's neccessary? Does anyone here have any experience with this?

Thanks!
 
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#2 ·
when i've had a hard drive go down the problems have cascaded rapidly. since you're still operating a couple months out I'd try some things first before assuming it's the HD. try running a utility like maintenance:

Titanium Software

if that doesn't help, boot your computer from the SL install disc and run 'disc utility', select your HD and under 'first aid' click 'repair disc' and see what happens.

next step would be to run disc warrior. if you don't want to pony up you can also do a re-install of SL (archiving your user info so it'll act like the same machine once you're done).
 
#4 ·
good luck, but i think it's preventative medicine to be running something like maintenance every few weeks even if everything's going great, and since it's free, i'd definitely give it a shot before playing around with the os.
 
#5 ·
The last time I had this problem, it was a dying hard drive. Bad sectors, specifically, which were then locked off and reformatted -- but the bad sectors were just a warning, the drive was in fact failing.

Use something like OnyX to make sure ALL browser caches have REALLY been cleared (including Top Sites' separate cache if you're using Top Sites!), but beyond that I'm inclined to say you're getting a warning of mechanical failure.
 
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