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Home / Mac / Another Fix for Mac OS X 10.6.3 Freezes, Stalls: Turn Off Spotlight

Another Fix for Mac OS X 10.6.3 Freezes, Stalls: Turn Off Spotlight

Last Updated on February 23, 2016 by SK

Previously mentioned fixes include removing login and startup items, or deleting errant kernel extensions, clearing kernel extensions, and more. Unfortunately, some users have only been able to find respite by downgrading to Mac OS X 10.6.2.

Users continue to experience intermittent mouse/keyboard freezes and/or system stalls after the update to Mac OS X 10.6.3. The issue is typified by the cursor freezing in place, or  text input becoming suddenly interrupted then catching up a few seconds later, and is covered in our Mac OS X 10.6.3 troubleshooting guide.

New fix: turn off Spotlight

While we previously mentioned that re-indexing Spotlight may partially resolve this issue, it now appears that turning Spotlight off completely eliminates the problem entirely for some users.

To do this, simply open System Preferences and select Spotlight. Navigate to the “Privacy” tab and drag your startup drive’s icon to the pane. Repeat this for any other volumes (disks) you’d like to exclude.

You can also turn off Spotlight using Spotless, a tool that allows you to delete existing Spotlight indexes as well.

Related Posts:

  • Spotlight Search – How to set Privacy and other Tips
  • How to use El Capitan’s Spotlight Search Function
  • Mac OS X El Capitan will not start up after update, fix
  • Mouse cursor (pointer) disappears; invisible / missing; fix

Filed Under: Mac Tagged With: Mac, performance

Comments

  1. tirolski says

    December 5, 2010 at 6:34 AM

    When I plug in a “3 mobile” dongle and connect to internet quite often it suddenly gives me message “Disconnecting…” and if I’m lucky and patient everything goes back to normal after 15-20 min and it reconnects.
    Sometimes I can switch “Location” in “Network preferences” and force it to stop and then reconnect again.
    In most cases when this happens it also blocks my touchpad and keyboard while I can still use my wireless mouse (before it was blocking only the mouse not the keyboard and the touchpad). In such cases I can’t type my password to change the location and the only option other than waiting is to push the button…

    Reply

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