Mac experts - help please.....

[Dave Bryce]

I have a problem with several Macs in my house. They are exhibiting what a friend of mine calls a "memory leak". Over a period of time, their active memories slowly decline until they're unable to function without a reboot, saying I have no available RAM.

 

This takes several days, longer on some of the computers than others. It happens on my Quad core tower, on my wife's laptop, and on my laptop.

 

I can monitor my memory with FreeMemory Pro. I can see it deteriorate. It deteriorates with no programs open other than the finder. I can restore the memory by either rebooting, or running FreeMemory Pro's "Free Memory" routine, although it takes several runs to free everything back up...and it runs really slowly when the active memory is low.....

 

Virus scans find nothing.

 

Currently, my tower shows that I have 906MB of memory available. There are no programs open, and I have 5GB of RAM. When re-booted, it shows about 560 MB active, 570 MB wired, and ~4GB free. I can literally watch the GB FREE meter tick away and the Active Memory increase, a 100th of a GB at random intervals, sometimes as few as a minute apart.....with no programs open, except the Finder.

 

No tech that I have talked to has been able to isolate the cause. They all want me to wipe the memories of the machines and reinstall every program, one at a time. This seems a bit stupid to me - how long do I have to wait in between installs to determine which one is causing the problems?

 

Anyone with any ideas?

 

dB

[kanker.]

I've been experiencing some stuff like that occasionally lately. I'll go from 40+ GB of available disc space to less than 1 GB overnight, wake up to a reboot your machine now message. It's like a massive memory leak that fills up the disc with VM.

[Ekewaka]

What OS, what Mac? What main apps are you running? There are so many possible issues with memory leaks. The good thing with a huge leak is that you might have a good chance catching a possible application using the activity monitor.

[Dave Bryce]

I've been experiencing some stuff like that occasionally lately. I'll go from 40+ GB of available disc space to less than 1 GB overnight, wake up to a reboot your machine now message. It's like a massive memory leak that fills up the disc with VM.

That happens to me as well!

 

I actually deleted a bunch of stuff back when this first started without realizing what was happening - I just thought I had filled my hard disk. Luckily, I had it all backed up.

 

dB

 

 

[Dave Bryce]

What OS, what Mac?

It's happened over several OS changes. Currently running 10.7.5. The tower is 2 x 2.66 Dual core.

 

What main apps are you running?

When? On boot up? How do I check that?

 

There are so many possible issues with memory leaks. The good thing with a huge leak is that you might have a good chance catching a possible application using the activity monitor.

Activity monitor?

 

In the course of typing these posts (on my laptop), the tower's memory has gone from 3.87GB available to 3.69GB.

 

dB

[kanker.]

I have a little suspicion about mine, but no confirmation of any sort. That brings about this question - do you have an Airprint printer?

[Ekewaka]

Activity Monitor is your Friend. You could open up any running app inside it and look at the memory consumption, especially VM sizes, if those crawl up rapidly then there's a leak. Usually the end result is that in 32-bit mode the app stops working and in 64-bit mode becomes a sluggish experience.

 

You should upgrade to latest 10.7.x version, that's for sure. I have not seen such issues with my studio computer running 10.7.x but I'm conservative about installing odd drivers and such.

[David Loving]

Why don't you schedule a "genius" appointment at an Apple store and see what they say? 10.8.2 is the latest.

[Nomadness]

I use a tool called Free Memory (on the app store for free):

 

http://www.rockysandstudio.com/apps/freememory

 

I have an Air, and it does the same thing... every week or so, I'll notice that the amount of available memory, as shown in the menubar, drops to something marginal. The tool lets you free it up on the spot without rebooting. I've never poked around with Activity Monitor to see what's doing it, but that is a good idea. Probably Chrome *mutter*

 

 

[Joe Muscara]

I have no process using more than 30 MB of VM right now, according to Activity Monitor. I'm up to 6 swap files after about three days of uptime.

 

IOW, I've never had such problems, but I'd check Activity Monitor first, as has been suggested. Or top, if you're a UNIX geek like wmp.

 

Mac OS X 10.8.2, 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM, and a bitchin' 500 GB SSD for the internal drive. Talk about speeding things up...

[Dave Bryce]

Why don't you schedule a "genius" appointment at an Apple store and see what they say? 10.8.2 is the latest.

Wife just came back from the appointment with her laptop. They want her to wipe the drive and reinstall one program at a time - quick fix, but not acceptable...and not a good one, either. I want to find the cause, or it'll just keep happening. Seems to me that the fact that it's on three computers in my house means there's a culprit that can be caught. My laptop was brand new last year, and it managed to develop this as well.

 

Before someone asks - not one piece of any of my software is cracked or otherwise illegally acquired.

 

dB

[Joe Muscara]

I would consider downloading the appropriate Combo Update from http://support.apple.com/downloads/ and running it long before I did that wipe and reinstall crap. That way, you at least know the OS is okay.

 

I know this happens on multiple Macs, but does it happen with different accounts set up on the same Mac? Make sure you're logged out of the other accounts first so they don't have anything going on in the background.

[RABid]

If you want to experiement, set up an external HD as a boot drive with a clean install of the same OS you are using on the other Mac's. That way you can test the clean install solution without actually doing a clean install on one of your computers.

[orangefunk]

Funny, I have also recently seen a massive usage of memory on my macs too recently. I had a 4GB iMac and 8GB Macbook and the memory usage was always way too high and system performance sloppy.

 

I upgraded my iMac to 16GB and I can see that some of the memory is still being utilised when I close an app to speed up loading if I decide to use it again. Is this something that is a recent addition or not?

 

Since I got my 16GB upgrade I don't have any issues btw... I always seem to have around 6GB free no matter what I do...

[wmp]

Anyone with any ideas?

Yes, but I don't think folks like my ideas a whole lot.

 

[keyman27]

What are the odds that all 3 of your Macs would coincidentally have the same problem, just on their own? It's gotta be something involving your network, no?

[Lone Stranger]

What are the odds that all 3 of your Macs would coincidentally have the same problem, just on their own? It's gotta be something involving your network, no?

 

That is something to consider. I have seen a network with 4 Windows 7 computers act up causing the PCs to run very slowly. Unplugging them from the network allowed them to run much faster. Rebuilding a defective server fixed the problem.

[zephonic]

To all reporting this memory issue, which OS are you running?

 

I have used all from Tiger up to SnowLeopard without trouble.

 

I did install Lion on my son's iMac and that is slow, but I figured that's because that machine is too old to run Lion anyway (2007). Never bothered to check whether it's the memory.

 

 

[OB Dave]

Activity monitor?

+1 on Activity Monitor. It's easy to use. Next time one of your machines starts to go into puke mode, run Activity Monitor. It should be in Applications/Utilities, or do command-spacebar to bring up Spotlight, type "activity" and Activity Monitor should be close to the top of the list.

 

You'll see a list of all the processes that are running, and you can sort them by name, CPU, real memory, virtual memory, etc. Shouldn't be too hard to see who's gobbing it all up.

[kanker.]

I'm on 10.7.5

 

I suspected a network issue too, thus the Airprint question

[nickd]

I had the same problem on my MBA: memory leak, which then filled up the hard drive with swapfiles, and needed a restart to reclaim the memory and disk space.

 

+1 on Activity Monitor: just click on the "Virtual Memory" column header to sort by this, and you'll see which process is using all the memory. For me it was an OSX process called loginwindow.

 

I couldn't find an easy fix, but the best advice I could find was to do a 'combo update' (see link earlier in this thread). This seems to have worked perfectly for me (no problems in the couple of weeks since I did it).

 

Do of course remember to do a full backup (or two) before doing the combo update just in case...

[Geoff Grace]

For what it's worth, I always do the Combo Update every time I update my Mac; and I've never had this problem.

 

Good luck, Dave.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[RABid]

My Mac Mini's have never run into this problem. They stay on for months at a time as my Media/Sonos servers. One with an older OS and one with the newest OS. I'm really thinking something malicious is in your system. Either a virus or a poorly written program that all three computers use.

[Karl Sutton]

10.6.8 here & never a problem - I am always really late to upgrade as I always seem to loose too much software in the process - or run into other issues

[Bobadohshe]

I've also sticking with 10.6.8 for the same reasons ^^^^^^^^

[AnotherScott]

There are no programs open, and I have 5GB of RAM. When re-booted, it shows about 560 MB active, 570 MB wired, and ~4GB free. I can literally watch the GB FREE meter tick away and the Active Memory increase, a 100th of a GB at random intervals, sometimes as few as a minute apart.....with no programs open, except the Finder.

The fact that it happens with no programs open indicates it's a background task. So you don't have to reinstall all your apps one by one. Most apps don't install background apps that run even when the app itself is not running, so they won't be of concern. Though there are a few apps that can install ever-present background tasks.

 

Anyway, one possible culprit is Spotlight. Go to the Spotlight preference pane, and add your hard drive to its Privacy window (which will delete its index). Unfortunately, this disables a lot of functionality (like being able to search content in the Mail program), but you will be able to see if it's causing the problem. Either way, you can then remove it from the Privacy window, and it will start to rebuild its index (which will take a while... you can check its progress in the Spotlight pulldown on the top right of the menu bar). If the index was corrupt, that might be enough to fix it. If the problem went away with Spotlight indexing disabled but comes back after the drive is fully indexed, that's another issue we can address if it happens.

 

If it's not Spotlight, it's some other background task. As people have suggested, check Activity Monitor to see what's running, though the information there can sometimes be a bit cryptic. But here are some other things you can try for troubleshooting.

 

Go to System Preferences, then Users & Groups. Check your Login Items. Anything listed there is a potential suspect.

 

While there, you can also create a new User, and then log in with that user, and see if the problem persists. If it does, it's a system-wide issue; if it does not, it is something unique to the configuration of your main user account. Again, there are too many variables to type here, but once you have the answer to that question, we can address further possibilities from there.

 

Also, to check other background tasks that may be running, check the StartupItems folders in root-->system-->library and root-->library

 

Also, since this happens with no apps running, this won't solve your problem, but in general, if you have either flash or java installed (both are no longer installed in OS upgrades by default), make sure they are up to date. Both have been notorious for gobbling memory. (Better yet, avoid going to sites that need them! Even with the most up-to-date versions, some poor java or flash code on a web site can do unpredictable things.) Avoid having too many browser windows, particularly if they have flash and/or java content, as that can cause things to get noticeably sluggish.

 

Also (though again, not applicable to a problem that starts on boot with nothing but Finder running), any apps that download large files or play large media files tend to create huge cache files. They should clear up when you quit the app, but sometimes they don't (and/or they don't seem to release all the memory they took). If rebooting doesn't solve this, you may have to manually search for and delete cache files (or use a utility to do it).

[David Loving]

Why not try what Apple suggested?

[AnotherScott]

Why not try what Apple suggested?

Wipe clean and reinstall and test one app at a time? First, it's very time-consuming, what if you have 100 apps? And you have to deal with restoring your data, too. And mostly, since almost no apps install background processes that run on boot, and he sees the issue immediately upon booting into the Finder without running any other apps, most apps can't be the issue (short of possibly having created some system corruption somewhere). Better to first specifically go after the 1% of stuff that runs in the background, rather than waste time also checking the 99% that doesn't. If it is tied to a particular piece of software, this will most likely solve the problem much more quickly. And if it's a system corruption that is not tied to a piece of software, then a clean install should fix it without needing to test after each app.

[Ekewaka]

I doubt Spotlight is the issue, that service is tested/debugged to the Nth degree. Also, if you disable it, content lookups in for example Logic will stop working plus many other apps that use the fast file lookups via Spotlight.

 

I don't know your system but I'm placing a high gamble bet on Chrome if you use that browser.

[OB Dave]

Why not try what Apple suggested?

 

I would have asked for another genius at that point. Absolutely the wrong answer.