[X4U] Spinning BeachBall Delay in Finder

[LA Licata]

Dear List,

Per Randy's maintenance tips, I repaired disc permissions, restarted  
with the shift key down, checked both user and system preferences,  
trashed the cache folder in the library folder at the root level,  
trashed my User's cache folder in Library folder again, and reset  
Safari (now that was painful)!

I also ran YASU, which seems to have the same routines as Cocktail  
and Tinkertool System that i already own. The only items not checked  
the boxes to clear crash and error logs. (I routinely run cocktail,  
and Disk Utility is run after every program update.)

I also reset PRAM and PMU.

For the record, the drive is an Apple standard 80 GB drive with about  
34 GB empty. Therefore, i did not run IDefrag but I own it and can.

So the results. (The only programs running besides Finder and  
Dashboard are Activity Monitor and Quickeys.) The folder now responds  
faster. It takes about 4 seconds from when I click on the "Name"  
column for the folder to complete the resort. (Before I started all  
this, it could have taken 2 minutes to resort!) But, when I open it  
in another account, it is nearly instantaneously resorted. Now, that  
account has less programs running, but I did not log out of my normal  
account when I did this test. (So, I am thinking that the CPU  
overhead is not really reduced.)

So, I can live with this, but will love to have it even quicker.  
Anything else?

My thanks to Randy (and Björn for other suggestions) for their very  
quick response!

Lee


On Aug 13, 2007, at 7:57 AM, Randy B. Singer wrote:

On Aug 12, 2007, at 2:36 PM, LA Licata wrote:

> I have a work folder that has 1400 embedded folders in it, and  
> totals about 3.6 GB.

I would start by doing all of the maintenance suggested at:

Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance :http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html

If that does not help, we will at least have eliminated the obvious  
as having been the problem.

What I suggest is that you download: YASU (free, donation requested)  
http://jimmitchell.org/projects/yasu/

run all of the default chores, and then restart your Mac with the  
Shift key held down (to have Repair Disk run in the background), and  
then, when your drive has fully started up, restart again normally.  
See if that helps.

Also, how big is your drive, and how much free space is left on that  
drive?
___________________________________________
Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)
___________________________________________