I have a Core 2 Duo 2.16 ghz macbook with 1gb of memory. Sometimes when I just try to go to a simple website or I look at the finder, my macbook shows the rainbow colored spinning wheel and everything freezes on computer besides the motion of the mouse. This happens intermittently and I can't do anything tommorow. It happened many times and I eventually took it to the apple store. They did all these diagnostic tests and did not find anything wrong. They told me to try formatting and so I did. And, I still have the problem and I completely stuck here. Please help. What should I do?

Sorry to hear that.

When you took it to the Apple store, was it for service or for them to check it out?

One of the most common problems in a MAC is font related. A font that hangs the system.

It could also be a intermitent memory problem.

I had a problem with my MACBOOK PRO that it was running very slow and it was a HD problem. MACs have the ability to work around HD problems until is to great and they stop working.

It could also be a program running in the background hanging the system. Do you have a antivirus software like Norton? Try taking if off and see what happens.

You may try reinstalling from scratch (make sure is a clean install that erases everything completely. Otherwise the source of the problem may remain there) and just install the system and nothing else. Don't even do the updates and do not install any programs. Just the system and nothing else. Try to see if you still have the problem. If not, it means that something that you installed that is causing the problem running just the system. If it runs well, try installing one program at a time and see which one causes the problem.

If not, sounds like it is a hardware problem and should be sent to Apple service until they find the cause.

Also, check the Apple forums to see if anyone else has a similar problem.

Hope any of this helps.

Good luck.

1. I took it to the apple store for a scheduled appointment and they checked it, but found nothing.

2. No Software like that.

3. I did this... and it did not seem to help me.

What you mean by "scheduled appointment and they checked it"? (I am not familiar with the way theb store works)

The reason I ask is that if you took it to the Genius bar or to a store employee... as far as I know they are not tech, just people that know it very well.

My feeling is that it has to be sent to repair directly to Apple. It is obvious that there is something wrong with it. If the people at the store cannot figure it out just means that they got to sent it to someone that can. Unlss, of course, they think there is no real problem.

Question... you speak of a spinning beach ball when accessing a webiste. The spinning beach ball only appears when it is waiting for an internal process to end. When Safari tries to access a website how fast or slows the website is reached will be determined by the web itself and not by your machine. Is it alwasy in the same website?

If the machine lock up when looking to a particular website could be the website hanging the browser because it is asking for somekind of plugin that Safari does not have. When you do "apple key + tab", can you change to other programs and keep using the machine? Then is not the machine hanging up but the browser and I would suspect it is the website that is hanging the browser.

THere is a difference between the OS Tiger hanging, (Usually does not happen unless there is hard ware problem) and the specific software hanging (usually when this happens the rest of the OS and other programs will work fine and no systme re-boot is required).

The finder issue is another thing. The beach ball would appear while looking for something if it has to look in a lot of places.

Another question... Beside those two issues, does the machine works fine with the rest of the programs? If so, then i may be specific search realted or that you expectatives are to high for the finder (speedwise).
I am no expert on MAc but I spent 20 years as a computer tech and what we did was to look for commonalities and to find ways to isolate the cause of the problem by elimination.

I think the bottom line is that you may have to send the computer for repair and not just a checkup.

I cannot do this. The cursor constantly spins and I could move around, but I can't switch between applications.

Now, that is very strange... uhmmm... You should be able to.

Is it a laptop or a deskstop? You may want to try installing OS X on an external HD and boot up from that one instead of the internal one to see what happens, or if it is a desktop and you have more than one internal HD you may want to swap HD to boot up from a different HD to see.

Hope it get better soon.

I have the same MACBook as you. Let me know which website you have a problem with, and I'll try it out.