How To

How to Fix SPOD

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What is SPOD?

Once in a while, for no particular reason, you may have to encounter the SPOD which is called the Spinning Pinwheel of Death. It is that multicolored pinwheel mouse pointer that shows a temporary delay when your Mac tries to figure out something. The pinwheel keeps spinning, as your Mac tries to think but nothing happens.The SPOD is a sign of your Mac freezing up.
Any Idea How to fix SPOD? Lets see a few tricks and tips on how to get rid of SPOD.

Fix SPOD

  • Open the Apple menu, select “Force Quit…” The Force Quit window shows a list of all running applications. The offending application will be highlighted in red text accompanied by “not responding.” Select the application in the list and click “Force Quit” to manually shut down the application.
  • Use the keystroke sequence “Command+Option(Alt Key)+Escape” if the spinning wheel does not resolve itself even after 30 seconds. The resulting list of programs currently running will indicate which one is not responding. Select the offending program with your cursor and click the “Force Quit” button at the bottom of the list.
  • Go to the Apple Menu and select Force Quit…
    Right click the app’s icon in the Dock and select Quit.
    Run the Activity Monitor.app, identify the misbehaving app, and terminate it.
  • Background Processes can also slow things down on your Mac
    It is also possible that the SPOD isn’t caused because of certain applications, but by another app or daemon that may be running in the background. A specific app, such as Safari, can also cause the slowdown by bringing another app to the foreground. If the spinning pinwheel or beachball cursor goes away but returns when you bring the Safari app back to the front, then it’s likely Safari that is having an issue.But if the SPOD continues when you switch to another app, then another app is causing the problem.It’s more likely that a single application is stalled or frozen. If that’s the case, bringing another application to the front or clicking on the desktop will likely bring the Mac back under your control. You can then force quit the offending application.
  • Clearing the dyld Cache is another trick to get rid of SPOD
    1. Launch Terminal, located at /Applications/Utilities/.
    2. At the Terminal prompt, enter the following command. Please note this is a single line; some browsers may show this command spanning multiple lines.
    sudo update_dyld_shared_cache -force
    3. Press enter or return.
    4. You will be asked for an administrator account password.
    5. Once the password is accepted, Terminal may display some warning messages about mismatches in the dlyd cache. Don’t worry; these are warnings about the content that is being cleared out and then updated by the command.
    There’s a good chance, though, that the next time you try launching the application that caused the SPOD, you’ll end up seeing the spinning pinwheel again.

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