Guide: How to solve Yosemite memory leaks and CPU usage

there are a number of things that were working better for me in yosemite. before i roll back to mavericks, i thought i would ask if anyone has seen improvement by doing a clean install of yosemite.

I posted earlier that I had a full set of problems: memory leak, runaway windowserver process at 90%, broken bluetooth, twice + daily crashes, unable to use thunderbolt display after waking up, wireless connectivity problems, etc.

I followed the fix suggestion that started this thread and it cleared up all the problems for 12 hours. All problems came back. Worked with Apple care and they had me do a reinstall of Yosemite. I repaired permissions before and after the install as the install broke many of them... all symptoms reappeared 24 hours after the reinstall, but not as severe. Crashes were 1 per day, and windowserver was only at 20-30%. Bluetooth was broken 90% of the time. I cleared the PRAM one more time, turned off 'Wake for network access" under Energy Saver in the system preferences and left the computer off for a day. When i turned it back on, and everything is working perfectly for the past 4 days.

Windowserver hovers between 1 and 20%. I streamed a netflix movie, used Game Capture (2 things that crashed OS before) while working on a MS Word document and a couple spreadsheets, and it was stable.

Ghost in the machine? I am unsure what caused the problems and what fixed it, which is definitely not where you want to be.

Derrick

thanks for reposting derrick. this thread is so long that i missed your initial post.

I have pretty much the same problems since day 1. all what you mentioned plus no mail notifications whatsoever. I'm gonna try turning off Wake for network access tho not optimistic. i understand people who admit things under torture because of exhaustion. i dont even wanna talk about the number of problems since yosemite anymore, I'm exausted of non solutions. i had a working computer and spent good money on it. now its useless.

I'm not going to do all this. Why ? You think that if this was the fix Apple would fix it and make it a update. I've gone back to ML. I was going to buy a new MacPro but seeing how this would be the default os and you can't go back, only forward, I'll pass.

Update. Friend followed this so-called fix on his Mac. Still ***** up his ram. No thanks.

This tweak basically solved the Airplay Mirroring issues that have been driving me crazy since I upgraded to Yosemite. Thank you !

I finally did a complete erase of the hard drive and new OS installation thru Recovery - which I was hoping was going to be Mavericks but turned out to be Yosemite. Since then, with a brand new system things are actually ok. Which is a huge relief since my system was seeing tasks with 300% CPU usage and huge memory leaks or something. I read up on it and saw it was nominally normal in some instances, but its safe to say after wiping out my iMac's hard drive and starting from nothing: all those levels are now normal.

I was so engulfed with high levels of CPU usage and memory issues, I forgot what a normal computer feels like when its not stuttering, delaying video, inable to open multiple programs, etc... it was getting to be ridiculous. So I suggest thinking about it.

So far I haven't tried Bluetooth yet and I'm still not getting Mail notifications when the program isn't open but small price to pay for a working computer again. Good luck.

FYI

Recovery reinstalls the current version of OSX that is installed on your Mac. So if you are on Yosemite it will be Yosemite.

Internet Recovery reinstalls the original version of OSX that was installed on the Mac when it was new. If that was Mavericks you would get Mavericks.

I guess I was going for Internet Recovery but couldn't find it. It don't matter the thing works, I'd rather it work with Yosemite than Mavericks but at the time I was hoping for any success and separation from the machine I had just yesterday. Hope everyone finds a solution. This was a month long headache.

Hi Luis,

Great post ;-)

Sadly it didn't work for me in my Mac Pro. I tried it several times and the only thing that worked for my machine in particular was to disable the "Displays have separate Spaces" option in Mission Control (in System Preferences). After disabling this, the WindowServer process dropped back down to normal levels.

SOLVED FOR ME! SEE BELOW...

Following are relevant portions of my original post of 4 DAYS AGO on another forum here dealing with these issues. My grateful solution, consistent with theirs, follows:

--------------------------

[Three] weeks ago my bright and shiny new iMac 27 i7 5K Retina arrived, with 1TB Flash drive and 32GB memory—no holds barred. I'm in the tech field so I have robust needs and way too many programs installed, including upwards of 20 helpers in the System Menu. Just a few days into my reinstalling everything from my outgoing Mavericks > Yosemite iMac (no migration on the new machine, just a fresh start) problems identical to those described here began—and haven't stopped.

Mail is up 24/7, including SpamSieve and MailHub add-ons. Even when many apps were open for my normal work, I'd have a good 20GB free memory. But somewhere around Day 3 symptoms of the issues began with a "stuttering" latency when dragging windows, or shifting desktop spaces, a lag of sorts, surprising given the abundant RAM and processor speed, but something I'd seen reported on Yosemite's roll-out, though I hadn't noticed it during my many months of beta testing Yosemite.

Once "stuttering" or resistant windows started, I could actually watch my Memory Clean status plummet from ±20GB to around 15MB, and huge spikes in memory pressure, as this appeared on my screen repeatedly over the [prior] two weeks:

Then the machine locked up. This happened with regular frequency through the day, sometimes a dozen times a day. The longest I went without seeing it was 1.5 days—but it made up for its absence by making it impossible for me to get 15 good minutes before freezing up again. Vizzini's voice from The Princess Bride rang in my head, "Inconceivable!"

Apple Tech Support, Tier 2/3, didn't understand it, but tried to help me debug it over several days, watching it occur live on screen sharing. They elevated it to "the engineering team," but I haven't heard back [now for over two weeks], having sent in screen snaps of every possible image that might help: activity monitor, console and system crash logs, everything.

Then I found [the forum discussing GoDaddy...].

So, since I have two GoDaddy accounts I checked the IMAP settings as they discussed and, as predicted, my SSL ports had changed to 143. Heeding the wisdom of all [in that forum post], I reset Mail settings as advised, and so far have had NO issues at all. I will continue to monitor and report, but if that's what's causing it, I'm sure your sleuthing will help a whole lot of folks, including me. I'm already grateful for a few hours of up time.

--------------------

NOW, if you do not have GoDaddy mail accounts, then this may not be your answer—but it was definitely mine. I have 14 email accounts, only 2 of which are at GoDaddy. I have pushed this machine in every conceivable way for over four days now and I can't get it to produce any of the errors, much less crash. Here's what I did:

— Incoming Mail Port = 993 (SSL=Checked)

For whatever reason, installing Yosemite (fresh or migrated didn't matter) somehow changed GoDaddy's incoming mail port to 143, which is wrong. It should be 993 using SSL (checked).

— Draft messages = unchecked

On the Mailbox Behaviors tab, uncheck "Store draft messages on the server"

And don't forget to SAVE each change by clicking on another email account in the Accounts panel.

Ir you're pretty seasoned, you probably know this shouldn't have anything to do with crashing an OS—but it does. Please, give it a try and let me know if it solves your riddles.

Thanks for your hints.

I had an IMAP-account (not GoDaddy) that has been changed to 143 by Yosemite.

I turned it b ack to 993, but now I get all those 'cannot connect'-messages even though the account is working properly.

Any other ideas about that?

Other than wifi and notifications, it doesn't look like any of what this thread is about has been addressed in the now released 10.10.1. Oh well, there's always hope for .2......

Thanks. Saves me the time to test another leaking boat...

grdh20 wrote:

Other than wifi and notifications, it doesn't look like any of what this thread is about has been addressed in the now released 10.10.1.

There were also fixes to Mail with regard to certain e-mail providers and Microsoft Exchange servers, along with Back to My Mac reliability that were listed, and I do know that there were also some less significant updates that may or may not address all the problems discussed here, so before you jump to conclusions it would be wise to apply the update first and check to see if your problems were addressed.