Level 1

10 points

kernel_task high memory usage

Hi, since I upgraded from Lion to Mavericks yesterday, the kernel_task process has been running consistently with 4.7GB of RAM. The OS is now constantly running at full usage of physical RAM and swapping more than 10GB to disc.

I have a MBP Early 2011 with 8GB RAM.

What is the kernel_task process and is there anyway of limiting its drain on my system. As it is, my MBP is pretty much useless as it takes forever to even load a webpage, let alone run servers and IDE's which I need to do.

Hopefully I don't have to revert to my Lion backup, but without a solution to this I'm going to have to.

Hope someone has a pointer for me.

Thanks,

Paul

MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 26, 2013 4:40 PM

Top-ranking reply

malcoad

Level 1

9 points

Posted on Feb 20, 2014 7:48 AM

If my experience is anything to go by, a good first troubleshooting step for this might be to go to your System/Library/Extensions folder and remove any .kext files created or modified before Mavericks was released, and certainly from 2012 backwards, then restart your Mac. This solved the problem for me.

After updating my iMac to Mavericks from Mountain Lion, kernel_task started hogging over 3 GB of RAM, though it had no noticeable effect on CPU usage. I did the above and found a set of extensions going back to 2012. They were all ATTO .kexts (ATTOCelerity, ATTOExpress), which I believe are to do with external hard disk drivers. After removing these and restarting, everything was smooth as silk, with kernel-task usage dropping to a little over 700 MB, which is a good bit less than it was using with Mountain Lion. Since then, it's crept up to about 1 GB, but this is still less than I saw in Mountain Lion.

The Mavericks installer found some others and put them in the Incompatible Software folder, but some may slip through, as in this case.

View in context

113 replies

Mar 9, 2015 5:38 AM in response to n5571

Please, what's method number 2 ????!!! Thank you

Mar 13, 2015 6:11 AM in response to danielfernandezlugea

Already tried danielfernandezlugea without appreciable results!

Apr 9, 2015 9:06 AM in response to BobHarris

Bob, I have moved my discussion to a new thread located here: kernel_task using too much RAM

Could you move your answer to that thread as well and then I have a few questions. Thanks very much.

senhalil

Level 1

8 points

Feb 29, 2016 12:34 AM in response to Chumpie

By "this" you mean what? The discussion is too long to find the working solution.

Eric Root

Level 10

685,209 points

Sep 8, 2016 8:28 AM in response to marc_l

You might want to consider starting a new discussion. Since this one is a couple of years old, less people are likely to look at it. A new post would be much more visible. You can link to this one.

lorenzf

Level 1

4 points

Feb 18, 2017 9:10 AM in response to EvilRaat

I had the same problem. I was able to solve the problem (I think), by de-installing the Citrix Receiver App as described here (https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX134237). I'm not 100% sure that it was only due to Citrix as I also deleted some 0kb files in (I think) /Library/Preferences that I thought I don't need, as this was suggested in some of the answers.

I hope this helps someone else.

Cheers,

Lorenz

p.s. I don't think rebooting is a 'solution' to anything. This is Windows-thinking ;-)

A.Brandt

Level 1

62 points

Mar 18, 2017 11:51 PM in response to EvilRaat

I have this issue as well, it seems that something happened last year sometime and a few programs now run incredibly slow on my Mac. How can I fix this?

Aug 24, 2017 12:37 PM in response to Panache00

I should have included that my ops sys is Sierra 10.12.6 (latest to date 2017-08-24.

My RAM memory is 4 GB (1x4) original

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

kernel_task high memory usage