Mac with swirling ball of death...help
 

Hello, My Mac computer has a swirling ball of death on it MOST of the time now a days. I have finally had it! I have tried everything I can find on line to repair this problem. It works for a while and then it slows down again. I need someone to look at it. I'd LOVE to stay local and not have to goto the Apple store in Orlando. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks....

Try calling MMD computer in Lady lake at 750-3707 and speak to Damian.

Clear the desktop of files (put them in folders in the hard disk). Close multiple windows and tabs not in use, especially windows/tabs that have audio and visual media (like youtube or news articles with embedded videos).

Refresh Computers in the shopping center by Spanish Springs can probably save you a trip to the Apple Store.

While your computer is running ok click on Launchpad then on Utilities. Open the Activity Monitor and let it sit running. When the ball of death shows up you should see a program using all your %CPU or in red. That is the program at fault. If it is not a system usually designated by the word root try not using that program. To shut it down click on the process and then click on Quit Process. One other thing is make sure when you exit a program you use Command-Q to quit and not use the X in the red dot. Doing so leaves the program running and over time you could be using up all your CPU time multitasking all the programs you run.

A couple of programs I use that may or may not help:

CleanMyMac 2: Clean Up Your Mac with Best Mac Cleaner. Clean My Mac 2

runs a scan of your mac and cleans up clutter

antivirus for mac:

http://www.avg.com/us-en/avg-antivirus-for-mac

AVG has a free version that i have. It recently found and fixed a problem on my iMac.

One more thing to try:

click and hold the command key, the option key, and the escape key. This will bring up a "force quit applications" window, and it will tell you if an application is not responding. I use this all the time when I get the spinning wheel when using my firefox browser (I force quit the browser then restart it)

command+option+p+r sometimes helps. Hold them all down and restart. Let it restart 3 times b4 letting go. This clears the preference ram.

The MAC and Ipod computer club meets at Saddlebrook rec Center 3 ime a month. The people there are very knowledgable and I'm sure they would be able to help you. call saddlebrook and ask them what days and times the club meets.