What to do if Sandvox Stops Responding

If Sandvox "freezes" or "locks up" while carrying out simple tasks (or spends too much time processing, taking up too much CPU time) then you can sample the application to help us track down the issue. You may experience this problem in the form of the "spinning rainbow cursor," "beachball of death," or "spinning pizza of death."

This article is also useful if you find that Sandvox stalls during a task, even if the "spinning beachball" never appears, for example, while publishing. If so, take a sample of Sandvox while it is stalled, before you cancel the operation.

Easiest way to take a sample of Sandvox:

  1. Click Here to open up a script with the "Script Editor" utility.
  2. While Sandvox has the spinning rainbow cursor, click the "Run" button in Script Editor.
  3. Follow the Instructions presented to create a file on your desktop.

If the above steps do not work (manual process):

  1. Launch Activity Monitor (found in the Applications → Utilities folder).
  2. Select Sandvox in the list of processes.
  3. Click "Inspect" in the toolbar.
  4. While Sandvox has the spinning rainbow cursor, click the "Sample" button.
  5. Click "Save..." and save the sample to your desktop.

Congratulations! You should now have successfully taken a sample of Sandvox. You now need to send the sample to us.

If you have not yet contacted Karelia regarding this matter:

  1. Use Sandvox's built-in Feedback Reporter to begin a new report as described in "Support and Feedback."
  2. Describe the problem, filling out appropriate fields.
  3. Wait for the automatic reply from our system so you can attach your sample file.

If you are responding to the auto-reply message or a message from Karelia:

  1. Begin a reply to the original support e-mail from Karelia.
  2. Attach the sample file you just saved.
  3. Add any additional information that may be useful to us, such as what you were doing that caused the "spinning beachball."
  4. Send the message.

There is also the rather rare case of the Spotlight database becoming corrupted. If so, it will drastically slow Sandvox whenever it attempts to open or save a file. For more information, please see the "The Spotlight database is corrupted" article.


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