ok. but on the other hand i'm doing stuff that previously wasn't provoking this quite of behaviour: using safari while installing office2008 and dragging a few windows. i'm sure now that i'm getting the beach ball when a program is accessing the hard drive (copy, install, …) i'll be taking the imac back to my dealer and requesting a new drive, i think it's the only solution at this point. a big thank you to all who helped. regards, alexandre > > On May 20, 2008, at 12:39 AM, alexandre wrote: > >> randy, one last question: would this kind of behaviour be "normal" >> if i were dragging windows and opening safari WHILE installing >> software off of an external firewire drive? > > The rotating beachball is a "wait cursor." It is not at all > necessarily a sign that there is a problem. It comes up whenever > you have to wait a pre-determined amount of time before the > requested function will be finished. So, if you are performing > several actions at the same time, and they will take some time to > complete, it is completely normal for the rotating beachball to show > up. > > ___________________________________________ > Randy B. Singer > Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions) > > Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance > http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html > ___________________________________________ > > > >