Interrupting the "Spinning Wheel of Death"?

Question

I am running Snow Leopard. It is up to date. Every few days, I get the "Spinning Wheel of Death."

• I can't do anything except hold down the power button to shut off my MacBook Pro.
• I've even tried a kill -9 -1 from a root shell that was already opened. It just hangs.
• The Spin Control app just says "Sampling" on a few of the apps but is unresponsive.

Do I have any other options to shut down my laptop? I don't like to just power it off.

Update: I have no idea which app is doing this. At the moment it appears random. My fan does not spin up. Maybe it's a networking thing?

Update: Dead again. This time I had X11 running and no matter what app I switched to, I got that app's menu bar and the X11 screen. I ping and the Internet doesn't respond. My Apple router is working because I'm streaming Pandora over WiFi. I turn off the wifi and I'm still screwed. I try to power off and it won't shutdowm because X11 is running. If course, I can't kill it. Press and hold... boom. This is not how an OS is supposed to work!

Answer 1

The beachball appears automatically when an app stops responding, and the one thing certain to cause that is disk I/O starvation. The VM system is trying to page in part of the app, and can't. The window server (which puts up the beachball) is already in RAM, and so isn't affected.

Install MenuMeters. It'll show you CPU, Net, RAM, and disk usage. I find it indispensable for figuring out which of those four limited resources is the cause of almost any slowdown.

Answer 2

Can you do a hard drive scan, to rule that out?

I have little OSX experience but I know both Win7, Vista, and XP have major conniption fits if there are are serious underlying I/O problems on the hard drive. Any sort of blocking errors in hard drive data transfers cause the system to just go AWOL no matter what you do, very much like what you're describing.

Answer 3

Run "fsck" (File System Check - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsck)

Boot into "single-user" mode by holding down CMD-S at startup. Hold that down and eventually your Mac will boot to a command line on a black screen. Once it's booted, type

fsck -yf

and your computer will run through the check (takes a minute or two) and will eventually finish and give you a report of either "ok" or "the file system was modified". Run it a couple of times to be sure (I've had instances where it's fixed issues, I've run it again, and it's found additional issues to fix).

Answer 4

Hold the shift key when logging in. This should start the system with no apps loaded (a barebone, "fresh install" osx). See if it happens. If it does not, add one app at the time and see which one causes it.

It might help also to open up a terminal and check if an app is trying to get the cpu undivided attention (i.e. 100% usage); if not, note that the behaviour you're describing is often due to

• no space on hard drive
• failed network connection or waiting for a network connection (a-la accept() )
• trying to swap something big (on OSX the use of swapping sucks, but that's just IMHO and anecdotal evidence for me)
• thermal issues (again, "a friend told me that.."). Not sure on this one

Answer 5

Open Console.app and take a look at the logs, if there is anything abnormal - a 15megabytes file filled with the logs of just one app IS abnormal, for reference.
I had problems in the past with unpolite applications spamming the logs (hamachiX in primis), so it might be worth taking a look there.

Answer 6

Jeff's probably on to something. If it's affecting all of your apps, you probably have a dying HDD or some other marginal piece of hardware. I'd take it to your nearest Genius Bar and let them take a look at it.

If it's not the HDD, take a look in the at Console.app to see if there are any log entries which correspond to the times your system is hanging.

You can also run the "sample" utility on an app which is hung. Open up the Terminal and type "man sample" for more details.

If you can track it down to a fairly consistent issue (software-based), please file a bug at http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/ (will require a free ADC account).

One more thing - if you have a copy of your partition (usually by using the restore feature of Disk Utility), you can boot from an external drive. Try restoring your system partition to an external drive and then either use the Startup Disk pref pane or reboot holding the "Option" key to pick your external partition to boot from. If the spins stop, it's a pretty good sign that something's wrong with your internal HDD or your filesystem.

Answer 7

Eliminate hardware errors first - put the system disks in and reboot holding 'd' key down. Run the extended hardware test, it will take several hours so do it overnight. It will spit out a weird code (if it finds a fault), if it had HDD in it - your hard drive's faulty. If you get this immediately clone your drive with SuperDuper or equivalent. You can use Tech Tools Deluxe if you have the Applecare - but it's not as good in my experience.

Then try running disk utility - it can do a check from a live instance of the OS, if it finds a fault you repair by using the system disks and booting from them holding down the 'c' key this time. If Disk Utility won't fix a fault, either re-install OS or use DiskWarrior (budget depending). Repair permissions while you're about it, it can't hurt.

Then check the console for errors as suggested in another post. If you narrow the problem to a single app, re-install it (use something like AppZapper to clean out the preferences).

This is a good resource http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html

Answer 8

The base os very robust, it's usually the GUI that hangs.

If you can manage to log out, everything should be fine again. I have a script "flogoff" that I run (from Terminal if I can still get there, otherwise via SSH) that kills my login and brings back the login screen. That usually works.

Update: Found it:

#!/bin/sh

pid=`ps auxc | grep $USER | grep loginwindow | cut -c 10-14`
sudo kill -9 $pid

Until 10.5 the kill didn't need a sudo. In 10.6 users are apparently not allowed to kill their own login.

Oh, and always, ALWAYS, keep Terminal.app open! Finder.app is just not robust enough and uses every opportunity to show the SWoD.

Answer 9

It could be a failing disk. Wouldn't hurt to run a Disk Utility check on your drive. And if you are not able to do it from within the OS, you could boot from an OS X disc and run Disk Utility from there.

Answer 10

I had similar issues with my iMac a couple of months ago, where it would just bog down completely and become irresponsive. For some reason I seemed to notice a lot more often when I was running virtual machines in VMWare Fusion, so at first I associated the problem with VMWare.

The problems started occurring more often. Also, occasionally the computer would not find the disk at startup (just showing a crossed over folder icon). It would then boot if I reset it again. These problems also got more frequent with time.

Eventually, the disk stopped working altogether - it just wouldn't boot, no matter how many times I retried.

So, while I don't have any advice on how to fix your problem or even diagnose your problem, I do have a general advice: if you haven't already, make a backup immediately. Bonus tip: start by backing upp the most important files individually, then make a full disk backup. Because this sounds awfully much like an impending hard disk failure.

Answer 11

First thing I'd suspect is a drive problem.

Get a good external disk that OS X can boot from, format it with HFS+, and run a clone app like Carbon Copy Cloner to dupe your drive contents to the external disk.

Then run the Disk Utility permission and data check on your internal drive. See if it can find (And repair) issues.

Keep running Disk Utility until no more errors occur.

You can try running your system off the external drive for awhile to see if you still have the lockups too, as that could narrow down the problem.

Make an appointment with an Apple Genius to have your system checked. If you have Apple's Tech Tools for your system (should have it if you had AppleCare) then you can run the disk diagnostic on that as well.

Also if it's under AppleCare you can call them for troubleshooting. Apple tech support is generally pretty good, and if you have to ship it (I know getting to an Apple Store for me is more than a little difficult) the turnaround is a day or two, not bad at all, even though I'm sure there are some who have horror stories (Aren't there always?)

Answer 12

I've experienced similar behavior (though not quite as drastic). I don't propose to have an answer, but I thought I'd ask for clarification for those who might:

Is it the case that your computer works perfectly fine for several days, you never turn it off during that time, and then starts to go haywire? And then, when you turn it off, it runs fine continuously for a few days, and then goes nuts again?

That's the behavior I noticed on mine when I started leaving it on for a week at a time. I have no trouble if I turn it off or reset it every couple of days. (And I do that naturally, not waiting for it to degrade to be unusable).

I didn't think it was clear from your original post, and I thought the information might help the troubleshooters if that was the case.

I'd have left a comment requesting clarification, but I guess I don't have the reputation to do so.

Hope that contributes something.

Answer 13

We have a similar problem with a Mac in our office running Leopard. It appears that it's Firefox that crashing the OS. Turning off extensions and re-enabling them one-by-one didn't do anything, it's the main programme itself.

Also, did you do an upgrade from a previous OS version as I've seen posts that this can cause major issues - people have recommended a clean install is the way to go.

Answer 14

As already suggested, get Carbon Copy Cloner, clone your boot drive and boot from there. See if it happens. If you have removable RAM modules, try removing ½ and see if you notice any difference.

Try also booting in Single User mode and without any startup items. (You can find how to do that in google).

OS X rarely does things like out of nowhere. Beachballs are usually the result of some hardware malfunction (when they occur like this, all the time) or kernel extension that may be incompatible. Do you have any External USB/Firewire audio interfaces?

Answer 15

It sounds like you just want to fix the problem, and often it is just easier to fix a problem than to troubleshoot it. "Why?" is often an expensive question.

Here are some of my general just-fix-it solutions when I can't find a culprit:

1. Log out and log back in to the user account.

2. Restart the computer.

3. Use Onyx to run daily/weekly/monthly maintenance scripts and check for corrupt preference files. http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs/english/apps.html

4. Download and run the Mac OS X Combo Updater for your current system version, i.e. If you are running 10.6.2, use the 10.6.2 updater. (I'm a new user, or I'd post a link. Try Googling: apple kb DL959)

5. ...? (I've never had to go further.)

The combo update may sound extreme, but is actually pretty efficient. It is typically a 4-700 MB file and runs unattended for less than the time it take to eat dinner. My impression of this is that it just reinstalls system files. In my experience, it does not affect users, preferences, or installed applications.

To help in the event of a future problem so severe that it prevents getting to the GUI, install Applejack, which is a nice single-user mode problem solver: (Google: applejack mac)