Spinning beachball

[neophyte]

Look through your browser cookies for any with Flash data and delete them. That would stop beach balls on my C2D mini.

[swf]

Yes, TRIM is enabled on the SSD. Strangely, the problem has not recurred today. I'll keep watching and try some of the suggestions.

[swf]

The problem continues. After another restart, I am presently looking at the Activity Monitor with no other programs open. The top line is reading left to right PID: 40, Process name: mds, CPU%: 91%. The graph at the bottom of the page is going crazy with red and green bars.

The CPU% on the mds process ranged between 65% and 97%. This was with no computer activity other than Activity Monitor. After several minutes of observation, it has now stopped this wild activity and virtually no mds is even registering.

The problem with this diagnostic technique is that if I leave Activity Monitor on during regular computer operation, when the computer freezes, I can't get to the Activity Monitor to observe any problems.

Any thoughts?

[Sarcany]

swf wrote:
Any thoughts?

Did you try Etrecheck? It's not just for discovering malware. It'll highlight a lot of system-level stuff that might be messed up. It's a good jumping off point for troubleshooting computer-problems where the culprit is not immediately apparent.

[Altered Horizons]

swf wrote:
The problem with this diagnostic technique is that if I leave Activity Monitor on during regular computer operation, when the computer freezes, I can't get to the Activity Monitor to observe any problems.

Yeah, you have to position Activity Monitor so that it is always visible (at least the first line in the list).

[NewtonMP2100]

......son....of....a......beach.......