Beach Balls for Days

Started by AaronH, December 02, 2019, 06:30:41 PM

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AaronH

Its an iMac Retina 5K, 27 Inch, 2017 model with a 4.2 GHz Intel Core i7, 32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4 memory and a Radeon Pro 575 4 GB graphics card.
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Joe

Quote from: AaronH on January 16, 2020, 03:53:04 PM
Alright, its been a month since I changed to a new Admin user on the Mac. I am running minimal apps (Adobe stuff, Pitstop 2020, Microsoft office, XMF and amazon music), regularly run without fonts in the user font folder and am still having issues.

I can't save files, open files, change what app is in focus, sometimes even typing without getting a beachball that lasts anywhere from 5 seconds to a minute or sometimes longer. I'm at a loss for what to do.

The new profile worked great for a short while but it has progressively gotten worse overtime.

How much RAM is in this Mac and what configuration is it, ie...16 GB RAM might be two 8 GB RAM modules.

I'm just wondering if you might have a bad RAM module. As a test if you have 2 or 4 ram modules try removing one at a time and use it for awhile and see if it gets better. If it does that particular RAM module could be bad.

On the issue of "I can't change what app is in focus," I run into that sometimes with Mojave when selecting an app with the mouse. My fix to use to COMMAND+TAB to go to a different app and then do it agian to switch back to the app that couldn't get the focus before. That usually works.

Desperate measure to is to downgrade back to High Sierra or Sierra and I've been contemplating that for awhile because clearly Mojave sucks hard.
Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 (c) | (retired)

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

Joe

Quote from: AaronH on January 16, 2020, 05:17:53 PM
Its an iMac Retina 5K, 27 Inch, 2017 model with a 4.2 GHz Intel Core i7, 32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4 memory and a Radeon Pro 575 4 GB graphics card.

You have the exact same Mac as mine except I only have 16 GB of RAM and I'll tell you I haven't been happy with it since day one. I upgraded from a 2013 iMac with an older, slower i7 CPU and Fusion drive and this damn thing is slower than my old Mac was. So I added an SSD drive. Still slower than the old iMac with the Fusion drive which makes no sense.

I just ordered a new 2019 iMac for my owner this week and it only has an i5 CPU with a Fusion drive and 8 GB of RAM and it is faster than my damn iMac with the i7 CPU.
Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 (c) | (retired)

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

AaronH

I'm seriously contemplating downgrading to High Sierra. Have to stick with High Sierra and above because Adobe 2020 apps won't work on Sierra.

Just trying to figure out now when I have time to do it and make the bootable USB installer.
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AaronH

Quote from: Joe on January 16, 2020, 05:27:38 PM
Quote from: AaronH on January 16, 2020, 05:17:53 PM
Its an iMac Retina 5K, 27 Inch, 2017 model with a 4.2 GHz Intel Core i7, 32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4 memory and a Radeon Pro 575 4 GB graphics card.

You have the exact same Mac as mine except I only have 16 GB of RAM and I'll tell you I haven't been happy with it since day one. I upgraded from a 2013 iMac with an older, slower i7 CPU and Fusion drive and this damn thing is slower than my old Mac was. So I added an SSD drive. Still slower than the old iMac with the Fusion drive which makes no sense.

I just ordered a new 2019 iMac for my owner this week and it only has an i5 CPU with a Fusion drive and 8 GB of RAM and it is faster than my damn iMac with the i7 CPU.

This machine feels kinda like a lemon too. Not sure what to do with that though. My co-worker's Mac is a 2011 and is due for an upgrade but I'm almost considering switching us over to windows with all the issues we have with file server crap and everything here. That probably won't fix anything really though and would probably make more issues.

I was hoping I could get my new file server approved by management but no luck and am still having fonts with Zero KB size issues. Hard to work from your desktop and copy files to the server if your customer has a change later if you get rid of the desktop files later. As a work around I'm copying all fonts to a Font Library folder in my user folder then copying them to ~/Library/Fonts as needed - wish I didn't have to though.
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seratne

Also having beach balls on a mac mini running Mojave. It's something network related for sure. 2 other machines on Mojave and they are fine. Besides the standard Adobe / Pitstop stuff, the similar stuff I have to AaronH is I'm also running XMF and have a NAS unit. Can't really not use the NAS, but have you noticed if the beach balls occur when running XMF? I never trust java apps. I'm going to run without it for the week and just use one of the other workstations when needed. Might be a driver issue and XMF/java network access on newer Apple machines.

AaronH

Quote from: seratne on January 20, 2020, 11:35:27 AM
but have you noticed if the beach balls occur when running XMF?

Yeah I was getting beach balls with everything, including XMF.

I went ahead and downgraded the iMac to High Sierra. That was a PITA. High Sierra doesn't install on APFS drives, so you have to Partition it to MacOS Extended (Journaled), which will then wipe the drive and do it correctly. Then I had to try to install High Sierra several times, because the Mac for some reason wanted to boot from the hard drive and not the attached USB stick to finish the install. Let it sit over the weekend and this morning it worked like a charm. Now I have just a couple adobe apps to finish installing and get Pitstop up and running and I'm back to where I was a 4:00 on Friday (But with a stable system hopefully).
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AaronH

Well, I have no idea what is wrong with this iMac. Everything I do causes it to throw beachballs at me. Copying an empty 6kb folder to the network share takes 30 seconds to a minute to do, and that's the fastest thing this machine will do. Opening an indesign file takes ages, then once it's open, it kinda runs fine unless you want to access any of the menu items up top, then nope, beachball for several minutes.

This is on top of a fresh reformat (zeroing out the HDD too) recently. I have no idea what to do.
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Joe

If it still under warranty I would call Apple support about it. They either need to fix it or replace it.
Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 (c) | (retired)

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

AaronH

Good idea. I don't know why I forget about AppleCare sometimes.
Mac & Windows | XMF | Fiery | Oris