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Spinning Blue Disc Won't Stop in Facebook

Mac 10.8.6 and Windows 7
Firefox (only) 38.0.5

Starting last night, the spinning blue disc that indicates a loading page in Facebook appears and won't stop when I click on (and thus open) a notification. The disc isn't visible when I mouse over a link, image or other graphic, but appears everywhere else.

If I refresh the page, the spinning disc goes away--until I click on a notification,

This problem doesn't occur in my other browsers, Chrome and Safari, just in Firefox. And it occurs whether I'm using OSX or Windows 7. This would seem to indicate that something is suddenly going on between Firefox and Facebook.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

If it is happening on both Windows and OS X, my guess is an incompatible plug-in or extension in Firefox. You could dry disabling some.

Also, check the logs to see what error message pops up when this happens. On the Mac, the logs are accessible by opening Console.app found in /Applications/Utilities.

ASKER

Thanks, strung. But would you kindly enlighten me by defining logs--and tell me what you mean when you say "check the logs to see what error message pops up when this happens." What's "this"? And where and why would an error message pop up?

And why would the problem suddenly start when no plug-in or extension has previous caused difficulty?

Thanks again.

When running the Mac OS, go to /Applications/Utilities and open Console.app. You will see the system logs displayed. Then try to go to Facebook in Firefox and see if any error messages are then displayed in the logs. If there are, copy and paste them here.

My knowledge of Windows is out of date. The Windows logs used to be accessed from Event Manager, but I don't know if that is still the case.

ASKER

Will do this when I go home later today.

Thanks.

ASKER

Here' s what I see, Strung:
Screen-Shot-2015-07-01-at-5.01.53-PM.png

ASKER

As you see, the last entry was for 6/22. Any other thoughts?

Those logs have me scratching my head. It looks like you have no logs from beyond when you shut down on 6/22. That makes no sense to me. You should have logs right up to date.

Is there any chance your hard drive is full and you don't have room for the logs?

Try opening Console again, and hit Clear Display and then Reload.

You could also try downloading ONYX: http://www.titanium.free.fr/onyx.html and then choose the "run maintenance scripts" option to rotate your log files, then try console again.

ASKER

Hard drive not full--I have 201 GB free out of 250. I'll try your other suggestions and get back.

By the way, I opened FF in safe mode and the problem remained.

ASKER

Strung, I've gone online and discovered that others are experiencing the same difficulty, which occurred almost universally recently . Also did the boilerplate clearing of cache, cookies, and history to no effect.

As the problem doesn't happen in any other browser but FF and since it occurs in both OSX and Windows, I've got to assume that it's a Facebook-Fiefox issue. I can't update FF to the most recent version as Ialready have it--and I'm reluctant, for obvious reasons, to do a complete FF reinstall. Any other thoughts?

Thanks.

ASKER

I see that it's possible to possible to install an earlier FF version--37.0.2 (this option via a Mozilla page). Would you recommend doing this? If, I do will anything be lost?

I don't know if anything will be lost if you downgrade FF. Probably nothing important. I am still puzzled by the out-of-date console logs, though.

ASKER

I did check out the list of Diagnostic reports in the console and they were quite up-to-date. Any significance? Does this bear on the all-reports issue?

I would have expected the all-messages panel to be right up to date and would have hoped that when Firefox started the blue ball an error message would have been spawned that might shed some light on the problem.

ASKER

Ought I to further investigate the all-messages problem? If so, where would I go? I googled the problem but don't seem to get anything useful.

Thanks.

Try re-opening console and and hit Clear Display and then Reload and see what the window shows now.

ASKER

I did; reloaded the same reports ending with the 6/22 one....

It may be a corrupt log file.

Try to remove all the log data in /var/log/asl

Then restart the computer.

ASKER

Where do I find /var/log/asl?

In Finder, pull down the GO menu to GO TO FOLDER and copy and paste the following line into the box and hit return:

/var/log

Move the ASL folder out of the /var/log folder onto your desktop, the restart the computer.

Check and see if console is now working properly. If it is, delete the ASL folder from your desktop.

ASKER

Thanks, will do.

ASKER

Strung, followed your instructions above, but no luck. Attached, the screenshot of the console entries. Note the very last one, which has the word halt (by me) in it. Could this be a clue? Thoughts?

Anyway, hold onto the folder now on my desktop?

Thanks.
Screen-Shot-2015-07-02-at-4.52.06-PM.png

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ASKER

Tried it and...problem is, my password is no password. Which the terminal won't accept--that is, when I hit return, I get the password prompt again and etc.

Any way around this?

You must have an admin password. What do you use for a password when you install new apps, for instance?

ASKER

Nothing--really. Whenever I'm required to submit a password I leave the relevant field blank and hit enter--and it works.

When the computer was set up by Apple, they refrained from assigning me a password for obvious reasons and I rather liked not having one; no one would guess it.

I suppose I could create one, but I'm rather reluctant to do that. I'm not sure that I could change the password back to nothing.

You already have a password. The computer it just set to enter it automatically. It is not possible to have a Mac without a password. You are forced to set one the first time you start it.

If you open the Users and Groups preference panel, and click on Login Options, you will see it is set to Automatic Login.

If you try to make changes by clicking on the padlock at the bottom left to unlock the panel, it will demand your password.

ASKER

I'm sorry, strung, but I just went to Automatic login, which is set at"off." Whenever I've had to make changes or verify my password, I leave the field blank (as I said) and just hit enter--and the process continues.

I just tried this by unlocking the lock on the password , which i was able to do without entering a password.

When I log into the computer, I don't write anything in the password field, but merely click (twice) on my avatar (which happens to be a fortune cookie).

If I'm not understanding something, please explain.

I was wrong. Apple will actually allow a blank password although it recommends against it, and the sudo command won't work with a blank password: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT202035

So your choice is either to set a password for your user, then use the sudo command, then change your password back to a blank password, or create a second admin user with a password and log into that user when you want to use sudo.

ASKER

Let me ponder this a bit. In the meantime, can I delete the asl folder from my desktop?

Yes

ASKER

Thanks.

ASKER

Thanks, strung!