Cant eliminate spinning ball of death -- please help!

Hi. Please help! I'm having issues with my girlfriends macbook which I think is running 10.6.8
I don't know much about macs and my girlfriend knows even less but I've been searching the net and trying stuff but with no success. Here's the issue, Turn machine on and everything looks okay. Click on anything and the spinning ball of death appears and I have to switch off machine. Nothing works, not even forced quit. Have just noticed that putting cursor over anything in top right toolbar shows spinning ball, and that's straight out of boot up without clicking anything. If I leave it to try and finish process, it goes into sleep and never wakes, has to be rebooted. Tried safe mode and everything works fine. Have disabled all startup login programs, verified disk and permissions. Don't know what else to do. Most of the posts I've looked at say turn on activity monitor but I cant get that far. I get the spinning ball straight from startup. Please help.
update- have just tried opening iphoto in safe mode. Program opened but is stuck on loading photos. Forced quit not working

Edited by deleted (Thu 26-Mar-15 18:04:56)

Try Safe Boot

Hit the power button and, as soon after as possible, hit and hold the shift key until the Apple logo appears.

Let it do its thing (which may take a while), then reboot normally.

See here for more: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

Thanks. I had already tried safe mode but just tried it again and now Ive got the spinning ball on the safe mode login, which I didnt have before! Have to power down

Hmm. Sounds like a job for DiskWarrior.

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html

I agree that Disk Warrior would most likely sort it out.

But it's getting rather expensive, I've ordered the upgrade to Disk Warrior 5 for Yosemite. It is supplied on a USB stick (no download) $59.95 + $11.95 postage $71.90, Sterling £49.61 on my card, I've now had to pay £15.79 Customs Charge including Royal Mail handling fee of £8.00.

Ouch!

That's just idiotic! They have always seemed to have had a blind spot re non-US customers, but the software is superb.

matty - if you have an Apple Store nearby it might be worth taking it to the Genius Bar. They have some pretty slick diagnostic kit and will be able to boot it from an external drive.

If you can't/won't spend the money on disk warrior, and it may not work.
Start up from safe mode connect an external drive and copy every thing important off.

Then restart from an OS X system disc/dvd by inserting the disc and holding in c when starting up.

THIS REMOVES EVERYTHING SO GET IMPORTANT FILES OFF FIRST.

Erase the disk and re-install the OS.

If this doesn't work you pretty well know it's a hardware fault, probably HD ready to fail or bad RAM.

Edited by stniuk (Sat 28-Mar-15 08:42:24)

Okay, Ive run diskwarrior, though not from boot as I dont know how to. I have a copy of the program on a usb stick which I have run. It will not let me test startup disk but software has been checked, it came up with a long list of permission repairs even though I had run disk utility in safe mode which also fixed permissions. Re-running several times still produces a long list of fixes. Surely a second run should be clear? Hardware showed SMART report disk is ok.
Two things I have noticed. Clock had disappeared. Have reinstated it but appears to have made no difference. Dont know why it vanished. More importantly, Ive discovered that when airport is turned off everything else works fine. Turn on airport, and the first thing I click on causes spinning ball of death and I have to turn off machine. Connecting with cable also is all fine. Is there a way to specifically check wifi hardware and software? Thanks

You should be able to reboot off the thumb drive (iirc holding c while booting, but you can also tell it in Preferences). Then rebuild the directory structure via Diskwarrior.

Thanks. I finally managed to check the master drive and diskwarrior did its diagnostics and fixing. However, upon rebooting the computer has not changed its behavior. My observation about working okay on ethernet cable was wrong. Pretty much anything ends up with the spinning ball and I have to turn off the laptop. Im guessing a clean install is the next step.