what (RAM?) is going on with my mac?

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Level 1

9 points

what (RAM?) is going on with my mac?

hey everyone. so im hoping i could get some info here and whats going on with my computer.

so out of the blue, my imac started freezing. and then when i would try to restart it, it would freeze at either the grey start screen, or i would get lucky and it would freeze as those boxes on the blue screen, sometimes half grey. at first i thought it was my HD, so i replaced it with a SSD, first os install, it froze on the intro video, but i was able to get it to boot onto desktop right after that. so it seemed like it worked. later that night it froze again, and when i tried to restart, it would do that same freeze. and since then i have formatted a few times, and same thing.

when i use safe boot, it works, but its only usable for maybe, say 20 minutes, then i get the beach ball. im hoping its not the mobo, or the video card. im really hoping its just the ram.

when i look at the activity monitor, and go to system memory tab, it says

free: between 6-12

wired: 2.08g

active: 1.27g

inactive: fluxuating around 640mb

vm size: 148g

page ins: 2.90g

page outs: 37.15 the computers been running for about 20 minutes so far since last freeze

swap used: 45g

this computer has the factory 4g ram config.

i have a screen shot but for some reason i am unable to upload it

if anyone might know or have any ideas of what might be going on here, i would appreciate your input!

thanks,

andrew

iMac (27-inch Mid 2011)

Posted on Jul 5, 2013 3:33 AM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Jul 5, 2013 8:19 AM in response to Nip604

There is excessive swapping of data between physical memory and virtual memory.

That can happen for two reasons:

You have a long-running process with a memory leak (i.e., a bug), or
You don't have enough memory installed for your usage pattern.

Tracking down a memory leak can be difficult, and it may come down to a process of elimination.

In the Activity Monitor application, select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected. Click the heading of the Real Mem column in the process table twice to sort the table with the highest value at the top. If you don't see that column, select

View ▹ Columns ▹ Real Memory

from the menu bar.

If one process (excluding "kernel_task") is using much more memory than all the others, that could be an indication of a leak. A better indication would be a process that continually grabs more and more real memory over time without ever releasing it. Here is an example of how it's done.

The process named "Safari Web Content" renders web pages for Safari and other applications. It uses a lot of memory and may leak if certain Safari extensions or third-party web plugins are installed. Consider it a prime suspect.

If you don't have an obvious memory leak, your options are to install more memory (if possible) or to run fewer programs simultaneously.

The next suggestion is only for users familiar with the shell. For a more precise, but potentially misleading, test, run the following command:

sudo leaks -nocontext -nostacks process | grep total

where process is the name of a process you suspect of leaking memory. Almost every process will leak some memory; the question is how much, and especially how much the leak increases with time. I can’t be more specific. See the leaks(1) man page and the Apple developer documentation for details.

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