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TICKET ARCHIVE -> computer spins its color wheel in search

J Johnson - Oct 9, 2006 - 4:34 pm

I have a brand new 24" imac. Many times when I try to open the application, the little color spinning wheel just keeps on spinning. I then have to use escape, and sometimes I have to shut down. I never had this problem with my 20" G5.

What should I do?

Thank you for any help.

Jo Ann Johnson

J Johnson - Oct 10, 2006 - 11:41 am

I am still having the problem of not being able to open an item by double clicking on it. The progress wheel keeps spinning, and then I have to manually shut down the computer and restart it.

Thank you,
Jo Ann

Thunderthud - Oct 10, 2006 - 1:01 pm

It is possible that your System is trying to (re)build your Spotlight index. You might just try starting up your machine when you are not going to need it for a while (like overnight) and let the task complete.

I will reopen this item for other techs to possibly comment on in case this does not correct the problem.

cfr - Oct 11, 2006 - 3:22 pm

You might try deleting com.apple.LaunchServices.plist from your personal preferences. You can find the file in (your home) -> Library -> Preferences. The system will then recreate this file with the default list of application/document-type pairs. Basically, this file tells the system which application it should use to open files of a particular type. It might tell the system to use Preview for PDFs, say, or Safari for HTML. If you've customised any of these options, note that you'll need to redo the customisation after deleting the file.

Let me know how you get on if you try this,. It won't do any harm, except deleting your customisation as noted, but it might not work in which case we'll know the problem lies elsewhere.

- cfr

J Johnson - Oct 12, 2006 - 5:01 pm

I think that deleting the com.apple Launch Services.plist may have worked.I will try it a few more times before I close the ticket. Thank you so much for all of your help.

Jo Ann

J Johnson - Oct 13, 2006 - 4:07 pm

I still have the problem. I have tried to reindex spotlight and have repaired permissions. I don't know what to do next.
Jo Ann

J Johnson - Oct 14, 2006 - 1:54 pm

I still have the problem. I have tried to run all utilitie tools, and don't know what to do next.

Jo Ann

J Johnson - Oct 15, 2006 - 1:34 pm

You send me a reminder every day, but you don't send me any information on how to fix my computer. I still have the problem. I have tried to run all utilitie tools, and don't know what to do next.

Do you know how to fix this problerm?????

Thank you,
Jo Ann

cfr - Oct 16, 2006 - 5:57 pm

I'm afraid the email server I rely on has been down on-and-off, so I only received your message today. Apologies for not getting back to you sooner.

Here's what I would do next. Do a few things which are causing errors - e.g. try opening different sorts of documents which would normally open in different applications.

(Note: I'm assuming you get the error when trying to open a document by clicking, but I've just realised that you originally spoke of trying to open applications. Could you clarify this, too?)

Next, open up your Console log. You can find this in /Library/Logs/Console/501/console.log although the "501" might be different if you have multiple users on the computer. It will be 501 if you are using the original user account (i.e. the first one you set up), 502 if you're using the second and so on. If you cannot open this by double-clicking, say, the application you'd use to read it would be in Applications -> Utilities and is called Console.

Copy the last few lines of the log (enough to be sure you're including any messages resulting from your attempts to open things etc.) and paste them into a response here. If I can see something helpful to try from this, I'll let you know. Otherwise, I'll reopen the ticket and the chances are somebody else will be able to suggest something.

In responding, try to describe exactly what you do as carefully as possible as this will assist me in making sense of the log file. Usually, when something goes wrong, there's a message in the log and what I'm hoping to do is match the relevant message to the error. However, the logs contain a lot of messages and so it is helpful to have some idea what to look for. (This is also why I suggest looking right after an error. That way we know the relevant messages must be near the bottom of the log.)

If you have any questions about this, please ask. If you are able to do some of this, but not all of it, please do what you can and just let me know whatever problems you run into. I realise this is frustrating (really, I do) but hopefully this will help us to pin the problem down and, with a bit of luck, we can then rectify it.

- cfr

J Johnson - Oct 16, 2006 - 7:42 pm

I think I have solved the problem by using the mac install CD. But I want to tell you, thank you for the wonderful service that you provide. I will close this ticket.

Jo Ann