I read the article about the Activity Monitor and what the numbers mean but I didn't see anything in the article that would tell me which program is the culprit of memory leaking. Periodically I receive error messages that there is no more room on my startup disk. This desktop is barely six months old and shows to have over 2GB still available. How do I find out which program is causing the problem and how do I fix it?
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
It's not a memory problem. It's a hard drive full issue. You may have 2GB available, but your Mac needs roughly 10% of its drive to be free for normal performance. This is for virtual memory, and temporary caches that get created when you're using your system. Download Omni Disk Sweeper. It's free.
http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidisksweeper/
It will tell you where are all of your storage is being used. Keep in mind that you should be very careful deleting anything located under /System and /Library. Post here if you see a lot of data stored in those locations before you remove them. It's more likely that you have a lot of stuff in your home folder. The mail downloads folder, downloads, and trash are often the culprits. You will find the mail downloads folder located in your home folder in /Library/Mail Downloads. The user's Library folder is hidden in Lion, but you can get to it by holding down Option, then clicking the Go menu at the top of your scree. You'll see Library as one of the choices.
Launch the Activity Monitor application. Select the System Memory tab. What values are shown in the bottom part of the window for Page outs and Swap used?
memory leak
