[iBook] endless spinning cursor

[Allan Hise]

On Tue, 8 Mar 2005, Larry Kollar wrote:

> On Tuesday, March 8, 2005, at 09:10 PM, R. Hefner wrote:
>
> > Lately my iBook has been experiencing the endless spinning cursor
> > problem and the only thing I can do to get it to stop is push the off
> > button for a few secs and then reboot.
>
> Time to do maintenance.
>
> As you boot the computer, hold down Cmd-S until you see white text
> scrolling on a black screen. After a couple of minutes, the text should

That's a bit extreme. Why not boot from the install CD (or firewire drive)
and run disk first aid from there? AFAIK, iit is doing the same thing as
fsck. Some people freak out at the command line, so it is nuce to present
a GUI way to do it first, if possible.

> Log in as usual, and start Disk Utility (Applications -> Utilities).
> Click your hard drive along the left, click the "First Aid" tab at the
> top, then click "Repair Permissions" at the bottom. Wait for it to
> finish. You'll see some weird messages in the window, but that's normal.

This probably will help, but I think it is mostly voodoo. If there is
something changing persmissions, that is a problem. But the software needs
to be fixed or removed - otherwise it will just do it again... I think
this is the most overrated OS X maintainence task.

>
> Finally, start Terminal (Applications -> Utilities). Type   sudo
> update_prebinding -root  /  -force   and press Return. It will ask for

Wait, I take it back. This is. This is not really needed anymore, assuming
you are using a recent (10.3.x for sure, I tzhink even 10.2.x) OS. This is
all taken care of by the OS.

I would recommend downloading a cocktail or macjanitor and running some
of the maintainence scripts there (like the daily/weekly/mothly stuff that
wont happen if the iBook is asleep or off when it wants to run
automagically in the middle of the night).

Allan