Rotating Colorful Ball Question, Please

[Robert4]

Hello,

Using a several year old imac desktop.

For the last few months, I get that rotating colorful ball
hangup.

What is this indicative of ?

Seems like plenty of memory, and HD fine, etc.

Just "old age" or ?

**Anything I can check out easily ?

Driving me crazy with how often it seems to happen lately.

**Can it be simply a single application that is causing ?

Thanks,
Bob

 

[Apple_Robert]

The beachball usually shows when the system is taking a lot longer to process tasks than normal. With the older model Macs, that was sometimes due to the slow HDD (at the time) speed, ability and or age of the device, as well as some apps that would get stuck thus freezing the Mac. It can also be tied to an OS update being a little more than the older system can rightfully handle.

 

[Fishrrman]

You need to tell us more about the iMac
What year was it made?
What KIND of drive is inside?
- platter-based HDD
or
- fusion drive (likely)
or
- SSD

How much RAM?
What version of the OS is running?

You can't expect real help until you provide this info.

My GUESS is that you have either a fusion drive or a platter-based HDD, and it's getting "old and slow" -- can't handle the demands of the OS any more. Or the drive is getting too full. Or the SSD portion of the fusion drive is "aging out".

If it's a drive-related problem (usually slowing down), and it's a fusion or platter-based drive, the easiest/cheapest/quickest way to "liven it up" would be to get an external USB3 SSD, plug it in, and start booting from the external drive.

It's easy to do and ANYONE can do it, if you follow my instructions.
(you'd be surprised at the number of folks who don't seem to be able to follow simple instructions!)