Word 2008 Not Responding: Pinwheel of death

[camera56]

Friends

After years on a PC, I jumped both feet into the Mac world (been away a long time). I have a spanking new MacBook Pro and a virgin install of Office 08. Here's the issue.

Typing along in outline mode when a little multi-colored pinwheel appears. Word is locked up at that point though I can click on another application and it works. So it's a word issue. The pinwheel of death rules for probably 60 to 90 seconds and then I get control back. I've turned off the auto archive feature and that's not it.

Any ideas?

 

[CyberTaz]

Welllll, Congrats & Welcome - but let's not jump to conclusions

That pinwheel is the OS X equivalent of the spinning hourglass you've
undoubtedly seen on Windows PCs on any number of occasions - it isn't
generated by the program, it represents a message from the OS telling the
program (and the user) "Wait a minute, I'm too busy to take care of you
right now".

If you're using .Mac (or any type of syncing) as well as a variety of other
OS features it can cause the pinwheel to appear at inopportune times.
However, the duration is the more troublesome point. This may very well be
one of the OS X Indexing issues... Especially on a new system.

First make sure that your "spanking new" MBP is fully updated with 10.5.1 -
if not, download the *Combo* Update from the Apple site [might not be a bad
idea to go ahead & do that even if you already have 10.5.1] & repair disk
permissions afterward. That night, quit all programs & leave the system on
overnight. Restart in the morning (obviously you can pick your own time
frame) and see if the situation improves. If not, post back with any
additional info you can supply.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John McGhie]

In Entourage, make sure you do NOT have the Progress Window displayed.

There's an OS bug in 10.5.1 that creates a huge memory leak that will
eventually suck all the available power.

What you describe is symptomatic of that. If it's not that,
Come back and we'll try some diagnostics.

(Auto archive is safe enough, you can turn that back on, and while you're
at it, also enable "Always make backup copy" so you have a parachute if you
need it.)

Cheers

Friends

After years on a PC, I jumped both feet into the Mac world (been away a long
time). I have a spanking new MacBook Pro and a virgin install of Office 08.
Here's the issue.

Typing along in outline mode when a little multi-colored pinwheel appears.
Word is locked up at that point though I can click on another application and
it works. So it's a word issue. The pinwheel of death rules for probably 60 to
90 seconds and then I get control back. I've turned off the auto archive
feature and that's not it.

Any ideas?

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Welcome (back) to the Mac!

Possibly a side note for this issue--I would bet money that your
spanking new MBP came with only the bare minimum of memory, as Apple is
notorious for this. You'll likely be much happier all around if you add
more RAM--Third-party suppliers such as OtherWorld Computing offer
reliable products and good warranties, and/or your local computer shop
can do it cheaper than Apple.

 

[camera56]

Friends

First and foremost, thanks for the timely and very useful sounding responses. I had the first three Macs and the first PowerBook and then was seduced away. The good news is that between my wife, kids, and me, we have five, so there you go.

I'll have at your recommendations on scrubbing the system tonight and report back.

I do subscribe to .mac. Should I turn something off?

I do have the 2mb Ram that comes with the machine. I'll seek out more Ram straight away.

I am not using entourage (other problems which I'll post elsewhere)

Cheers and thanks again

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

I do subscribe to .mac. Should I turn something off?

If you have an iDisk mounted, that was a problem with slowing down
earlier OS versions. I thought Apple had fixed it, but worth trying by
un-mounting it.

I do have the 2mb Ram that comes with the machine. I'll seek out more
Ram straight away.

Oops! Ignore that. Apple is now shipping those with 2GB of RAM--I guess
they want to change their rep. 2GB should be plenty, that's not the issue.

Daiya

 

[camera56]

Daiya (lovely name btw). The idisk has been giving me fits. I have tried to back up to it several times using (I guess time machine) and it's never really worked right. So it's been bined.

I do have 10.5.1 on the machine but will fiddle with the update tonight and report.

Thanks again for all the help. Wonderful discussion board!

 

[camera56]

Friends. I think I figured out the problem. I had turned on the backup utility (the one with the umbrella) and it was, from what I can tell, constantly trying to complete a backup to the .imac disk. I have turned it off and unmounted the imac disk. So far so good.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Glad you sorted it--thanks for confirming and the compliments.

 

[Guest]

Well, I'm on a PBG4 with not enough memory and still on 10.4.11, and I'm sick of the slow typing response and pinwheel of death, which comes up every 20 minutes or so for at least a minute. I've tried turning off everything and closing other applications, but to no avail. And anyway, I don't want to have to shut down my browser or mail just to type a document. Think I'll just go back to the old Word, don't need 90 percent of the bells and whistles anyway.