Q: Mail.app crashing
I have been using El Capitan for nearly two weeks with little no problems and then all of sudden this morning my Mail app starts acting up. It locks up my computer for nearly 10 minutes, just trying to load the app, and locks up the computer from doing anything else. It is still doing it this afternoon even after a few restarts and running First Aid out of the Disk Utility. This is the first time I have had this much problem with any apps so far.
Is anyone else experiencing these same problems today??
I'm almost wondering if it is an issue with the servers or the app?? do I need to delete the app and reload and start over??
iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)
Posted on Oct 13, 2015 12:56 PM
A
Remove the Sophos product by following the instructions on this page, and also this one, if applicable. If you have a different version, the procedure may be different.
Back up all data before making any changes. Never install any "anti-virus" or "anti-malware" software again.
If you still have problems after removing Sophos and restarting, see below.
B
A program, or perhaps more than one, is at times using excessive memory, causing the whole system to be temporarily unresponsive. That can happen for two reasons:
A long-running process with a memory leak (a kind of bug)
Not enough memory for your usage pattern
Please note that if the cause is a memory leak, installing more memory will not help. That's likely if you already have more than 4 GB of memory. Tracking down a memory leak can be difficult, and it may come down to a process of elimination.
When you notice the unresponsiveness, open the Activity Monitor application and select All Processes from the View menu, if it's not already selected. Select the Memory tab.
If the graph at the bottom of the window is in the yellow or red zone, 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, or if kernel_task is using more than about 1.5 GB, 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 processes named "Safari Web Content" render web pages for Safari. They use a lot of memory and may leak if certain Safari extensions or third-party web plugins are installed. Consider them prime suspects.
Another process often implicated in memory leaks is "inkjet4" or "inkjet8," which is a component of the HP printing software. If it's present, force-quit the process in Activity Monitor to solve the problem temporarily. Empty the print queues in the Printers & Scanners preference pane (which has a slightly different name in each recent version of OS X.) If you don't use an HP printer, remove the software. Otherwise, if the problem is recurrent, update the software (which may not help) or contact HP support.
"Wired" memory should be a small part of the total. That memory is not swapped, but it makes less physical memory available which may then result in swapping. If you have a lot of wired memory, that's usually an indication of a memory leak in a third-party program that modifies the operating system at a low level. Ask for guidance in that case.
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 totalwhere 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.
Posted on Oct 14, 2015 8:32 PM