To fix the problem you will need to identify what the problem is. The "Beach Ball of Death" indicates that the Mac is struggling to perform some task. This may be related to hard disc problems, network problems, other hardware/software problems.
The usual suspects:
Open Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder). Select your Mac's hard disc in the left hand pane and the First Aid tab on the right. Click the Repair Permissions button. Let it whir away and fix what it can. Click the Verify Disk button. Green is good and red is bad. If the disc needs repairing you will need to boot from another disc (or the Mac OS installation disc) so the internal disc can be unmounted and repaired.
Open Activity Monitor (also in the Utilities folder). Click on the CPU tab and the list will show any software that is hogging the CPU causing other software to struggle. Quit the hogging software.
If it happens mostly while looking at web sites in a browser it will be the Flash player plug-in. Check you are running the latest version.
Restarting the computer will reset everything.
Check Software Update from the Apple menu to make sure all the system software is up to date.
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