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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Pin Wheel

wingspan - Oct 16, 2006 - 8:17 am

I am running Mac osx 10.3.9 and have been running Netscape 7.2 for as long as it has been out.. Just lately, for some reason, every time I attempt to type or click on a site, the spinning pinwheel comes up and stalls the operations for at least 5 seconds. I thought that maybe my computer was almost out of memory, so I deleted almost 16G bytes out of 32 that the computer has. But it had no effect on the stalling operation of the computer. Even when I am just typing, in the middle of a sentence it starts to spin the spin wheel. It does not happen anywhere but when I am on line on Netscape.. Should I try reinstalling Netscape? Will I loose my bookmarks and email folders if I do? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Oh and just typing this letter, the spinning pin wheel came up over 25 times.. I hate it!!!! :-)
Rob

philippe99 - Oct 16, 2006 - 8:50 am

Hi and welcome to macosx.com.
Before firing Netscape, could your try the following basic maintenance tips ?


Close all the running applications (except the Finder)


(1) Could you try to repair permissions
(must be admin)
Launch Applications/Utilities/DiskUtility
On the left pane, select the drive
On the right, select the First Aid (or SOS) tab
Then click on repair permissions and let run; don not worry about messages like " new permissions...."
Quit DiskUtility
Shutdown and reboot

(2) could also download Macjanitor
http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_...acjanitor.html
and use it to run the maintenance scripts
The maintenance scripts are Unix scripts which are automatically ran on your
Mac between 02Am and 04 am..if your Mac is on at this moment.
I can advice you to run, through Macjanitor, the daily script each day, the week script each week, ..and so on


(3) Could you also download Onyx
http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs/english.html
Go into the cleaning tab and use it to clean the caches. use the defauts Onyx offers, do not
clean at this stage the system caches.
!!! Please download the release corresponding to
your OS !!!

In between each operation, shutdown and reboot the machine; then test again


Beside Netscape, do other applications show the spinning wheel of death ? Which ones ?

How much RAM do you run ?

Regards
Philippe

wingspan - Oct 17, 2006 - 6:02 am

Hello,
I download the advised software and ran the applications the way you suggested. It still did not help the spinning pinwheel. I also did the repair permission which did not help. On your question on how much RAM do I run, where do I find this information from? Thanks for your help!
Rob

philippe99 - Oct 17, 2006 - 7:09 am

(1) RAM; Apple menu on the top left of the screen > About this Mac; and by the way, on the same window, the OS you run

(2) Beside Netscape, do other applications show the spinning wheel of death ? Which ones ?

Philippe

wingspan - Oct 17, 2006 - 8:02 am

Philippe,
I only get the spinning wheel when on Netscape. I tried Safari and it does not happen.. As a matter of fact, as I am typing now, I can type up to 15 words before the words appear. Then a whole sentance wil appear. Also I have 256MB of SDRAM. I am running Mac OSX 10.3.9
Rob

philippe99 - Oct 17, 2006 - 8:39 am

(1) well, 256MB is short for 10.3....and especially Netscape !
(2) "I'm typing now": so I guess, the problem occurs in the Mail part of Netscape, not in the browser part ???
Have you many emails ? Can you clean up your email boxes ?

Philippe

wingspan - Oct 17, 2006 - 9:55 am

My computer comes with dual 500 MHz processors and approximately 40 gig bytes. It is about 5 years old. I noticed it was running slow, so I checked the available gigs left and I only had 7 out of 40 left, so I went through and clean out all duplicate folders and what not and now I have almost 30 gigs available. I did a search for "SIZE" and the three highest were Sent box = 761.4MB (only 5 messages in there and they are all text files, no attachments. Then is the Inbox = 579.9MB approximately 20 emails but no attahments either, then there is the icon that comes up saying it is (which is my name) robabeyta.sparseimage it is 5.86 GB. I clicked on it and the spinwheel started in and after 10 minutes, I forced quit the action. I am confused how the two mail boxes could be so big yet, there are not very many emails in it???
Rob

philippe99 - Oct 18, 2006 - 2:03 am

> then there is the icon that comes up saying it is
> (which is my name) robabeyta.sparseimage it is 5.86 GB.
This is the FileVault encrypted image of your Home folder (so, FileVault is enabled on your machine); do not touch this image

Obviously, something wrong with Netscape and apparently not with the system itself

> I am confused how the two mail boxes could be so big
Is the trash of Netscape Mail empty ?
Within Netscape, also clean the Sent box

Philippe

wingspan - Oct 18, 2006 - 9:17 am

The Icon that I am speaking of, follows this path, "Hard drive"> "Users"> "robabeyta" > (ICON) robabeyta.sparseimage If I click on it, a security box comes up and ask for the administrator to type in password. I type in password, but the Icon does not open up, just returns to the picture of the icon. I did a search on "In Box" and "Sent Mail" and over 20 of them appeared. Their dates differed back to the year 2000. I checked the size and they were all above 540MB, so what I did was trash all of them but the most recent one of each. Then I saved what I thought was important emails in the inbox and sent emails to a text file format and threw both of them in the trash and deleted the lot of them. When I started back up netscape, the sent and inbox were there, but empty and their size was minimal. I have come to the conclusion that it is Netscape where the problem lays. I started up Safari and it works fine, without any spinning pinwheels. When I am on Netscape and the pinwheel appears, I can move the mouse pointer to the left where the dock is and the pointer highlights all the applications that I store there. My question now is, How can I download Netscape again, but retain my present bookmarks mail, password tools, etc and then trash this old Netscape that i am using.. Is this a good plan, or what is your opinion on it. Oh one more thing, I thought that maybe it was my moden (DSL) that maybe slowing or something like that, but I changed modems to our other mac and it work fine there..... Help :-) Rob

philippe99 - Oct 18, 2006 - 9:58 am

I do not think at all that your modem is involved in this issue. Safari works fine, so...

I do not use Netscape anymore since on 1.3. Even on my Dell machine, I have replace it by Thunderbird

Netscape profile location:
http://sillydog.org/netscape/kb/plocation.html

I do not think that reinstalling Netscape will solve the problem. I will try to install Thunderbird beside; Thunderbird can import Netscape mails
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_...ting_your_mail
http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/faq

Just let Thunderbird a try and decide. No ?

Phil

wingspan - Oct 18, 2006 - 10:13 am

Can Thunderbird import bookmarks too???

philippe99 - Oct 19, 2006 - 2:34 am

No, Thunderbird is email only.
To be short Netscape has been splitted into Firefox (browser) and Thunderbird (email client)
Phil

wingspan - Oct 19, 2006 - 7:20 am

O.K. I attempted to start netscape and it would begin to load then quit.. So I downloaded Netscape again, but when I clicked on the new icon, nothing happend, so I down loaded Firefox, which transferd all my bookmarks and setting from netsape, then downloaded Thunderbird.. Everything works fine now. I have all my emails too. I trashed everything from netscape, except for a few bookmarks, which I locked so I would not accidently throw them away, in case I need them for some reason later.. I guess the problem is fixed Firefox works fast and no more problems..:-) Thanks for your advice and help.... Rob

philippe99 - Oct 19, 2006 - 7:38 am

Great we both find a solution to this issue. And thank you for using macosx.com.
Good luck in the Firefox world: you'll discover how easy you can tune it through plug-ins to fit your specific needs.

Regards
Philippe