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Need help with Disc Utitily

Just need some guidance here. The other day I went onto my "Activity Monitor" and saw that my 1GB memory in my Macbook had just a little sliver of green. I also had some page outs. So I ran disc repair and wala! over 500MB of space in my memory and no page outs. Now a few days later I look again and not much free space in memory, but not as bad and way more page outs than b4. So I did the same thing but this time it again opened up a lot of free space, but it had no effect on the page outs. BTW, I have all my applications out of use when I check. Browsers closed etc.


I am wondering if the page outs really matter any. I have 35% left on my disc so it is not maxed out at all, and 282 MB in page outs, so that is a small portion of my hard drive. Free space on memory comes and goes. I assume the page outs happen when I run out of memory. And BTW I have 4GB ordered which should help when it arrives.


So my real question is: Are the page outs a problem? Why did I get rid of them the first time and 2nd time not? And, It annoys me when my laptops fan comes on and it gets slow. How to prevent that. It seems to happen even while I still have free space on my memory, so I am assuming it is not a memory issue. I am updating to Snow L soon so perhaps there will be more protection then? My guess is that If I am on a site that works my computer hard it is because there is mal stuff coming in. Although it often happens on Gov sites. I would not expect them to have that kind of stuff....But I am sure there are those who think differently LOL


Thanks for any clarifications you can give me on these endeavors.


Ron

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Dec 12, 2012 9:08 PM

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Posted on Dec 12, 2012 9:38 PM

Hi, was it Repair Disk, or Repair Permissions as it sounds what you did?


282 MB in page outs isn't bad, it sounds like you have something eating up Inactive memory.


Open Console in Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when this happens.

29 replies

Dec 12, 2012 11:14 PM in response to plastermaster

You only have 15 minutes to edit a post.


Open Activity Monitor in Applications>Utilities, select All Processes & sort on CPU%, any indications there?

One way to test is to Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, Test for problem in Safe Mode...


PS. Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive


Reboot, test again.


If it only does it in Regular Boot, then it could be some hardware problem like Video card, (Quartz is turned off in Safe Mode), or Airport, or some USB or Firewire device, or 3rd party add-on, Check System Preferences>Accounts>Login Items window to see if it or something relevant is listed.


Check the System Preferences>Other Row, for 3rd party Pref Panes.


Also look in these if they exist, some are invisible...


/private/var/run/StartupItems

/Library/StartupItems

/System/Library/StartupItems

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons

/Library/LaunchDaemons

Dec 13, 2012 3:03 PM in response to plastermaster

There are some apps that "hold" memory. For me it is photo related apps. I open the terminal and run "purge" to free up inactive memory. Now that I have a Nikon D800 camera, I have to shut down Photoshop completely after I edit about 10 photos due to the "Active" memory it gobbles up. It's a pain but I haven't found a better solution. Purge just works on the inactive memory that accumulates.

Dec 14, 2012 5:12 AM in response to plastermaster

Did I miss something?

It means you don't have Developer tools installed. Do not fuss about the purge command. It is not essential, but rather a distraction. Concentrate instead on the fact that you only have 1 GB of RAM. When you get your 4 GB you have ordered, and install it, your problems will disappear. This reassurance is from someone who has 4 GB RAM installed running 10.6.

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