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Mac has become insanely slow : Processes SystemUIServer, UserEventAgent and loginwindow using a lot of memory

I have been using my Mac for for many months without any problem. But recently all of a sudden the Mac became insanely slow.

I opened Activity Manager to see what was happening. For three processes SystemUIServer, UserEventAgent and loginwindow, the memory gradually increases and reaches upto 2 GB for each process. This completely hangs up my Mac.

I tried the following:

  1. Restart Mac
  2. Restart Mac in safe mode
  3. Manually kill the processes
  4. Remove Date and Time from Menu bar (this was supposed to be the problem for the SysteUIServer process's memory according to many users)
  5. Removed the externally connected keyboard and mouse(some had suggested this for UserEventAgent's memory)

No luck with any of those. The moment I log in, the memory spikes up.

Any idea what on earth is happening? Please help.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Oct 19, 2013 9:47 AM

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6 replies

Oct 19, 2013 9:53 AM in response to SatheeshJM

Create a new user account with admin status. Log out of your account, then log into the new one. Does your problem stop? If not then boot into Safe Mode. Does the problem stop? Boot normally. Does the problem stop.


If none of the above help, then you have a corrupted system and need to reinstall Lion.


Reinstalling Lion/Mountain Lion Without Erasing the Drive


Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.


Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.


When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.


Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Continue button.


Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

Oct 19, 2013 11:39 AM in response to Kappy

Thanks for the reply.


Created a new admin account and logged in : Same problem
Logged in using safe mode : No memory leaks!
Logged out and logged back in normal mode : Memory leaks are back :-/



Is reinstalling the only way?

On a related note, I know your answer said "Reinstalling Lion/Mountain Lion Without Erasing the Drive" but just making sure: there will be absolutely no data loss(or loss of private keys or custom settings) if I reinstall right?

Mac has become insanely slow : Processes SystemUIServer, UserEventAgent and loginwindow using a lot of memory

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