beach ball of death keeps showing up - please help!

mlevin77 · #1 (**permalink**) 04-21-2008, 10:26 AM

I just cooked a ROM from the 6.0 kitchen and am getting weird behavior with the spinning beach ball. It comes on every 5 seconds, spins for 8, and goes away, repeating continuously (I can see it when on the Today screen). It's really annoying, and I don't know what causes it - I'm just sitting here in the Today screen, doing nothing, and watching this beach ball come and go. I currently have 10.85 MB free in Storage, and 20.71 MB free in Program. It is making the whole system very slow. I had seen this once or twice in my previous ROM but it always went away after a reboot.
One thing I did notice that may give a clue as to what it's doing. I have SPB Pocket Plus, and after a reboot, some of the tabs on its Today plugin have generic icons. Right after the beachball first came and went, the icon became correct. Is it updating stuff regularly somehow, or accessing my SD card, or what?!?

Mike

**weedahoe** · #2 (**permalink**) 04-21-2008, 11:55 AM

Something is loading or running in the background and bogging down the processor which is why you get that beachball. It is really no different than that of your PC and its 'wait' cursor.

You can use a task manager or sorts to see what is really running in the background and then would be able to tell what exactly is causing the issue. I personally use MemMaid and it will tell you what the process is and how much CPU it is using.

gambatte · #3 (**permalink**) 04-21-2008, 12:04 PM

Well, it's definitely trying to do something. Do you have that SPB pocket Plus on the SD card? Can you take the SD card out and see what happens?

Sorry, I forgot to tell you not to flash with the SD card in place (don't know if you did or not). Sometimes, that causes problems (I've read and I didn't have one at the time I flashed). Sounds like you may want to flash again based on your post on the upgrade forum. The WM6 will run a little slower. It is a bigger program than WM5. I didn't notice a huge difference; maybe I'm more patient LOL. I don't know about those lines. I didn't mess too much with the splash screens. I don't care too much about customizing the visuals.

With the Cyberon, are you sure that there is no opportunity to configure the program. The MSVC was not in the program group but in the "settings"; I would think Cyberon would be there, too. Seems weird that you would have to do a registry hack to get it running.

mlevin77 · #4 (**permalink**) 04-21-2008, 12:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by weedahoe

Something is loading or running in the background and bogging down the processor which is why you get that beachball. It is really no different than that of your PC and its 'wait' cursor. You can use a task manager or sorts to see what is really running in the background and then would be able to tell what exactly is causing the issue. I personally use MemMaid and it will tell you what the process is and how much CPU it is using.

ok great! I installed memmaid, and I see "Idle Process", at 96% CPU. What the heck is this and how do I kill it?

Thanks,

Mike

**Perasite** · #5 (**permalink**) 04-21-2008, 12:28 PM

Idle Process means that it is doing nothing. It is idle.

Any other process that spikes in usage would be the problem.

mlevin77 · #6 (**permalink**) 04-21-2008, 12:34 PM

>Do you have that SPB pocket Plus on the SD card?
>Can you take the SD card out and see what happens?

I have it installed on Device (not on card), and I tried taking the card out - still beach ball

> Sorry, I forgot to tell you not to flash with the SD card in place (don't know if you did or
> not). Sometimes, that causes problems (I've read and I didn't have one at the time I
> flashed). Sounds like you may want to flash again based on your post on the upgrade

hmmm. I didn't take the card out during flashing; I can try if it sounds like that might be the issue.

Mike

mlevin77 · #7 (**permalink**) 04-21-2008, 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 6700Yuma

Idle Process means that it is doing nothing. It is idle.
Any other process that spikes in usage would be the problem.

ok, now I'm stumped. There is nothing that's above 4% - almost everything else is at 0% and one or two things go back and forth around 3-4%. Why the beach ball then?!?

Mike

gambatte · #8 (**permalink**) 04-21-2008, 01:11 PM

hate to ask but can your do a hard reset? Or have you?

mlevin77 · #9 (**permalink**) 04-21-2008, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gambatte

hate to ask but can your do a hard reset? Or have you?

I haven't yet. I flashed it yesterday and have spent the last 12 hours customizing everything. I wish I kept a more careful track of what I had done when this first appeared. I think before I hard-reset, I'll start pulling off software one by one to see if I can figure out what's causing it.

Mike

**weedahoe** · #10 (**permalink**) 04-21-2008, 01:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mlevin77

ok, now I'm stumped. There is nothing that's above 4% - almost everything else is at 0% and one or two things go back and forth around 3-4%. Why the beach ball then?!?

Mike

The only other issue is he accidentally fubar'ed the ROM when he cooked it and he needs to hard reset and re-cook.