Spinning beach ball of death

[alossie]

Hi,

Starters:

15" AL Powerbook 1.5 GHz, 1 Gb ram (Apple on 1 chip), OSX10.4.4 and
OSX10.4.5, 80Gb hard drive (with 16 (mon) or 19 Gb (Wed) free)

I've had this problem for 3 days. After using my computer most of the
day (successfully) Monday to type a paper (with Endnote 8.0 references
added), I was able to type about 7 words, and then the SBBOD came up.
I checked Activitiy Monitor, which said that Word was taking up over
95% of my CPU. I do notice that my computer is getting really hot when
this happens. I'm not able to use word at all, but excel, powerpoint
and entourage are fine.

Here's what I've done:

1. Tried trashing the word plist and repairing permissions. No help on
Monday. Gave up and went to bed.
2. Everything worked fine on Tuesday.
3. On Wednesday, started up my computer, and same problem. (also with
hot computer)
4. Repaired permissions (nothing unusual) Upgraded to OSX10.4.5,
repaired permissions (nothing unusual), uninstalled Office,
re-installed office.
5. Worked for a little while, then the problem started up again.
6. Computer getting hot again.

thanks for your help

Amy

 

[Amy]

Hi Dayla,

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried that, but it didn't work. What I
ended up doing was booting up under my other admin account to see if
the problem persisted there. It didn't. So, the problem is in my
current admin account. I don't want to re-install my system software
until I finish my draft, so what I did is this:

I opened word, made a test document and entered several refs. Then I
formatted my document to make sure everything was working there.

OK. Then, I copied and pasted my document into the new one. It seems
to be working for now, and I hope it will get me through the first
draft. After I'm done with that, I'm going to re-install my system
software, and maybe wipe my computer first.

Thanks again,

Amy

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi Amy,

See the same link as before (Troubleshooting Index), and you'll see a
heading for Document Corruption. Try some of those fixes on a copy of your
old doc to see if it may have been corrupted. EndNote has been linked to
doc corruption, by some (and I don't know anything more about that, sorry).

Also, if it worked in a new account (always a good troubleshooting step),
perhaps a startup item might be interfering. You can test that by logging
into your account with shift held down--this prevents startup items from
loading as usual.

If the problems only occur in one account, it is EXTREMELY unlikely to be a
problem caused by your system installation, so I think the reinstall OS plan
is not a good next step. Rather I would check for
applications/utilities/haxies interfering with each other first.

Daiya

PS. If you are writing a dissertation/manuscript (as most EndNote users
are), here's a bunch of possibly useful links re using Word for long
documents:
http://daiya.mvps.org/bookword.htm

PPS. When you said "uninstalled Office", you did run the Remove Office tool
and not just drag it to the trash, right? Dragging to the trash doesn't
work.

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

If the problems only occur in one account, it is EXTREMELY unlikely to be a
problem caused by your system installation, so I think the reinstall OS plan
is not a good next step. Rather I would check for
applications/utilities/haxies interfering with each other first.

I couldn't agree more. I would look for file corruption in either the
Microsoft User Data folder (an add-on, template or something like that
there??) or in the Preferences.

I don;t see any reason why you should have to reinstall the system.

Corentin