- Start the MAMP application. The start page will open a new web browser page, but will fail to connect, which is expected since the server isn’t really running although MAMP seems to think it is.
- Click the Preferences button.
- In the Preferences window, don’t make any changes. Just click the OK button.
- Results: The Apache and MySQL servers will stop and restart. Correctly, this time, rather than spinning infinitely. To make sure things are working, click the Open Start Page button; the MAMP start page should then load in a new browser page.
- If the Dashboard widget still continues to spin, just click its Stop Servers button, wait for the servers to stop completely, then click Start Servers.
Thanks to Iwaruna.com
Exact same solution as http://blog.evandavey.com/2009/06/how-to-fix-mamp-wont-start.html. Not foolproof because it doesn’t work in all situations. But it’s worth a try sometimes. In my case, it failed.