Beach Ball Loading & Emptying Trash Problems

[Afro1989]

Hello. It has been five months since I've have my Mac Mini and this is the first time I've experienced problems. I am getting the beach ball when I attempt to do simple tasks like searching Candybar in Spotlight. I just get a never-ending spinning beachball and was forced to do a hard shut down a couple of times.

Also, it is starting to have trouble emptying the trash when there are only a few pictures in it.

What should I do to repair this? Repair Permissions?

 

[x86]

What should I do to repair this? Repair Permissions?

It can't hurt to try...

 

[mad jew]

How much free space do you have on your hard drive? If you open up Activity Monitor, is there a process or series of processes using up a lot of your resources? Make sure you're looking at All Processes and not just My Processes. There's a drop down menu up the top.

 

[Afro1989]

I have plenty of space left on my hard drive. 76 GB out of about 93 GB.

 

[mad jew]

Cool. Any rogue processes? Activity Monitor is in your Utilities folder FWIW.

 

[Afro1989]

What exactly should I be looking for in Activity Monitor?

 

[mad jew]

Sort by CPU and then RAM to see if there's a process using up a lot of your resources. Also check for processes in red that may be hanging.

 

[Afro1989]

Would this help?

 

[mad jew]

Excellent, yes, but click where it says Active Processes and select to show All Processes.

Cool looking theme BTW. What's it called and what other system changes do you have installed? Often these can be the cause of problems like yours.

 

[Afro1989]

Um, it's called Milk theme and I'm using Shapeshifter. I also have Tinkertool installed and that's about it.

 

[mad jew]

Okay, there's nothing hanging and nothing that I can see that's taking up many resources. Maybe open a new user account and see whether the slowness is present there, too.

 

[Afro1989]

Thanks man! I'll tell you if I have any problems.