macbook keeps getting rainbow wheel

[cybereclipse]

I never used to have this problem before, but after I upgraded the HDD and the ram, i keep getting this rainbow wheel over and over again while doing stuff I never used to have a problem with before
New specs: 2.26 ghz 3gb ram 750 gb 5400 RPM
Old specs: 2.26 ghz 2gb ram 160gb 5400 rpm


Could it be the hard drive slowing things down even if the speed is the same? New hard drive is a western digital caviar blue

[awesomeSlayer]

Try booting with the Mac OS X Install Disc and go to Disk Utility. Maybe the loading is taking a while.

[Cer0]

Have it verify disk and also I forgot the option but in disk utility (i think) have it check startup disk. I use Onyx to check my start up drive so can't remember the official way to do it with the install disc.

[jonsingh12]

Most likely its your harddrive, try putting your old one in, the original macbook harddrives are underpowered and if your logic board is revision 1 then you won't be able to use upgraded harddrives like that, cause the power limit is there, and usually happens when installing cause both the CD/DVD drive sucking juices and the HDD, very finicky, there is a work around but you need to downgrade the firmware so it had the old speed of the HDD 1.5 and power limit not there. Had thss problem, took it to apple store genius bar, and they just replaced it i found some bogus excuse.

[cybereclipse]

Most likely its your harddrive, try putting your old one in, the original macbook harddrives are underpowered and if your logic board is revision 1 then you won't be able to use upgraded harddrives like that, cause the power limit is there, and usually happens when installing cause both the CD/DVD drive sucking juices and the HDD, very finicky, there is a work around but you need to downgrade the firmware so it had the old speed of the HDD 1.5 and power limit not there. Had thss problem, took it to apple store genius bar, and they just replaced it i found some bogus excuse.

this new HDD uses 5V .55a and the old one used 5v 1a so I don't think it's the power. I put in another HDD (WD 320GB 5400RPM) and with that one, it takes around 4-11 minutes to boot from it. (Yes, i selected it in Startup Disk and cleared my PRAM)

I honestly have no idea what could be causing this, but this macbook pro seems to be a piece of sh*t

[CaptainChaos]

Swap your ram back out with the 2gb and see what happens.

[bootloader]

Did you do a clean install of OSX or copy it over to new HDD ?

[Vm0n3y]

Often times the spinning beach ball indicates a failing hard drive. There is an application called SMART Utility (there is a free trial) which you can run to check the S.M.A.R.T status of your drive and check for failures.

Hope this helps