Q: Mavericks and memory (Ram)

You are not alone. I have a mid 2011 IMac 27'' with 8gig RAM, and my system comes to a crawl when I simply have safari open. Never had this problem with ML. Never had SWAP with ML. I upgraded from ML and I installed A fresh copy of Mavericks. With so many people facing the same issues, I can't believe we have not had a word from apple. And there probably won't be.

I hd the opinion that the OS has a built in death cycle. Apple wants me to upgrade my 3000 dollar machine each year. That will never happen. I have a 5 year old PC running windows 8.1 that runs just as smooth as it did under win7. I expect more from apple.

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Your Mac doesn't sound too healthy and you are correct that it shouldn't be swapping to disk with just Firefox or Finder running.

It has been about 3 weeks since you posted into this thread & you are still refusing to take any advice suggested here.

We come here to help other Mac users, so please post an EtreCheck report, if you don't like the suggestions you don't have to do any of them.

There are also several other steps to take to diagnose issues like this. I will gladly help you (or others will if you think I'm too obnoxious). It would best to create your own thread.

If the Mac looks clean then you could consider reinstalling (which can be done over the top without losing data - but backup first). Or you can revert to the previous OS you used.

Wouldn't you like to offer us the chance to help you?

There's no way you're not having problems with running Mavericks with only 4GB of memory on a 2009 iMac! That's what I have and I reinstalled the darn thing several times with and without upgrading from on  OS to another. I've tried 10.7.5 and 10.8.5 to upgrade from and again I was greeted to a slow machine with loading issues and random spinning beach balls, Finder loading grey spinning wheel when opening a window and of course a slow response Finder, freezing from CPU and memery leaks. Which all means that the Memory Manager wasn't working correctly. Finally I tried wiping the hard drive clean (as always) and I tried Reinstalling Mavericks from scratch. Keep in mind none of these step included restoring from a back-up. It works allot better with a fresh install than upgrading. I've tried nothing having any 3rd party apps install to turning off Spotlight and that had no effect on the gray spinning wheel that shows up each time I open a new folder. Time to time Macricks still takes up allot of memory randomly in Finder and again the biggest memory issue occur with Safari. And more so with each Apple labeled product; iWorks or iLife, and for the love of Pete; Mail. Even when I run nothing at all, just having Mavericks sitting or in sleep mode takes up 60% to a whooping 80% of my iMac's 4GB memory. Only Apple knows for certain what the heck Mavericks is doing with the memory usage, but it's certainly not running anything I've selected. I had to install an app called: FreeMemory to reclaim my missing memory that's oddly used. If you're not having these same issues; like the rest of us that have a older machine with maxed out memory, then consider your machine a perfect diamond that's able to withstand the rocky abyss called Mavericks!

Hi, I have the same mac amongst my five. No issues here either. Because you are having issues with your Mac or install is not indicative of a general problem. You can troubleshoot, live with it or reinstall the backup you made before you installed Mavericks.

Cheers

Pete

Try reading my post I've added under my user name. I've reinstalled Mavericks 4x buddy! Previous OS works fine. Todays update seem to address something more than what was stated in be found in this update. Since this minor updated my iMac's memory has impoved; slightly.

Yeah there is a problem with Safari for me.

So mine should be unbelievable! Not that it wasn't already.

I read your post and you said there is no way our simar macs cannot have been free from issues. Mine is and it sounds like Drew's is.

Anyway, glad your RAM Issues have improved for you.

Cheers

Pete

Thanks, now you and Drew makes what percentage of people not having issues on this form?

Sorry I don't see any of the issues you see, 10.9 can work on the hardware we both have.

• Redownload 10.9 & reinstalling (I'm assuming you used the same installer).
• Install & run it from an external disk (incase the internal is damaged or failing).
• Check Apple's site for firmware updates for that model.
• Run Apple Hardware Test to confirm the RAM & other components are OK (rember or memtest are supposed to be better for testing RAM)
• If 10.8 works fine stick with it.

Can you please explain why you think you need to create some 'free memory'? I refuse to go into this again, go back and read the link on arstechnica.com. The information on 'free memory' & 'memory cleaners' is out there. You don't need them & you don't help the OS run efficiently by constantly removing data that is cached on the fastest part of the hardware, it can cause more slowness than it solves.

Ok, so I just downgraded my Mac, so far I think it is a good move, the amount of used ram is way better now. I put all my files back on the folders and all my settings are the same.

I hope Apple releases some updates to resolve this.

I have seen the QTKitServer in an unresponsive state too. Filter on 'QTKit' or 'Quicktime' in the 'All messages' section of Console if you want to troubleshoot that specifically. It seems harmless to me, I haven't seen the slowness when it was marked not-responding.

Have you considered that Sophos autoupdate using 900MB of RAM is perhaps a little excessive?

SophosScan is also running (as root).

'Window Magnet', that doesn't seem like a default app?

Looking at your What%27s+Running+and+How+much+is+used.jpg, the data read & written is rather high, has this been running a while or has Time Machine been backing up the entire system?  Perhaps Sophos is scanning everything?

I realize you are probably trying to get this to run all the apps you need, however some just seem to be incompatible with 10.9, if you post an EtreCheck report (in a new thread please, link it from here) we will try our best to help.

petermac87, do those PID's look high to you? Some are around 11100, it may be nomal if the Mac has been up for days.

See if you have any 'Throttling' blah 'Respawning' blah, messages in the 'All messages' too.

You have a good point regarding my 3rd party apps. I given up after my last attempts to keep it basic believing my issue was regarding other apps. So what's listed here is only after trying the basics first. I installed things I need to work with PC's. So with that said screen sharing works best if the Mac could be like a PC that have snapped windows of course having a antivirus program help too! Now regarding QT I've just reinstalled a version of QuickTime that's a bit older than the stocked version that's preinstalled. Once I restarted my iMac that fixed that problem   .

At the time of this my memory gone from 2.44 GB to 243 MB and the video had stopped playing minutes ago. *YouTube was running a 1080 video while monitored, after I stopped the video the memory was quickly sucked up. Yeah, I think it's time for me to call it quits. My experience with Mavericks has been a pleasant one. Thanks again for the those that truly attempted to aid and assist. Best Regarding to those that have success!

Cheers!