Memory Issue - Inactive Memory?

Been having an out of memory issue with Capture One Pro. When i have the Activity Monitor open I can watch the "Inactive Memory" slowly climb higher. It starts out when i first boot at about 170 mb - currently at 351 mb and climbing, and all i have running is firefox and Itunes.
At first i thought it was a C1 Pro issue, but it seems that may not be the case.
When i opened the Activity monitor last night the Inactive Memory was at 10 gigabytes. ***?
What is Inactive memory? and why would it keep climbing?
Is this an issue with OSX that anyone has heard?
All software is current.
Hardware Overview:
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro5,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 12 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s
Boot ROM Version: MP51.007F.B03
SMC Version (system): 1.39f11
SMC Version (processor tray): 1.39f11

Eric Eskam wrote:
Sounds like a classic memory leak.
I'm sorry, but you could not be more wrong. As explained above, Inactive memory is in effect a filesystem cache. So OS X is caching files in RAM as they are being written to disk by Capture One Pro - this is so that if they are re-read, they do not need to be re-read from disk which is slower. OS X uses this cache only when it's not needed by other programs.
The inactive memory is increasing here, because Capture One Pro is constantly writing to disk. OS X is then thinking "I have all this RAM that's not being used, how about I keep a copy of what's being written to disk in this spare RAM for speed?" .. make sense?
If Capture One Pro had a memory leak, that would be visible within wired/active memory, and the process itself would grow in size.
In fact, the more inactive memory your machine is consuming, the better.
Free RAM is wasted RAM.

Similar Messages

In OSX Activity Monitor, what's the difference between 'free' memory and 'inactive' memory

In OS X Activity Monitor, what's the difference between 'free' memory and 'inactive' memory. My daughters 2Gb MacBook Pro is very slow, it probably needs more memory but there is almost 1Gb of 'inactive' memory but no 'free' memory when an application is opened.
Thanks

Free RAM is the one that has not been used by any application since you started up your Mac, and inactive RAM is the one that was used by an application and it is not in use anymore.
1 GB of inactive RAM is a lot, and it may be the cause of the slowness. There are a lot of apps that allows you to turn inactive into free RAM. I use FreeMemory, but have a look at the Mac App Store.
If you are a developer, you can do that with a command you can type into Terminal:
sudo purge

What's the difference between free memory and inactive memory?

In activity monitor it mostly shows my having a lot of inactive memory and a lot less free memory even when I'm only running Safari for instance. What is this inactive memory and why is not available?

This is a very informative article:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107918

Help with memory issue - abap memory vs roll area

Hi experts,
with our customer we are using TRM and WebDynpro technology to process Tax forms. We have portal integration. Recently due to performance reasons we were forced to analyze memory consumption and actually we are unable to understand what is happening. In memory inspector we can see much higher total memory than for ABAP total.
For Example, running simple application for form bundle search will produce following memory consumptions:
We do not understand why the Total section is + 12 MB when all ABAP code is just 7 MB?
Another example - opening of a form bundle (FB) leads to cca 32 MB consumption (no matter what type of FB we are opening). Visiting all pages of FB leads to 52 MBs (specific FB, this depends on FB type). Again, when we invoke memory inspector a lot of memory is in Roll Area.
This look like roll area is almost always twice as big as the actual ABAP Application.
Please any suggestions what is happening?
May be just the misunderstanding of roll area. To our knowledge roll area is the area of the internal session managed by memory manager (usually mostly created by extended memory). But why is this area so large when the actual application needs half of the space?
Some discussion suggests that this is due many dead objects released when memory inspector is started. But why is this space still available to the application and not put back to the extended pool? Is there any way how to identify those dead objects?
Thanks a lot

Hi, ORA-4031 in this case can be caused by unrestricted growth of the PGA, thus forcefully reducing the SGA.
We've had this in the past also.
The solution is in older versions to increase the shared_pool_size as you mentioned but with ASMM, this is no longer an option. You can however retrict the growth of the PGA by setting SGA_TARGET.
On our system this now looks like:
SQL> show parameter _target
NAME                                 TYPE                 VALUE
db_flashback_retention_target        integer              1440
memory_max_target                    big integer          10G
memory_target                        big integer          10G
pga_aggregate_target                 big integer          0
sga_target                           big integer          8GSee how we in fact set the max growth of the PGA to 2Gb ( 10Gb - 8Gb)
Try this and see if ot works for you also
Success!!
FJFranken

Software memory issues., software memory issues.

When I open a programme, be it Photoshop, Preview, Safari I am presented with the last file/page I had open beofre closing the programme previously.
This can be very frsutrating when it's 30 contact sheets.
This has only occured since installing Lion at the weekend... any ideas please?
Chris_98

But it affect tovall the apps the support that in your system:

Inactive memory - I want to clear it.

I have a 2010 macbook pro with 6 gigs of RAM.
WHAT I KNOW: that inactive memory is the "same" as active memory; that inactive memory is basically cached information that can quickly be replaced when needed; that the system automatically regulates inactive and active memory.
Well that´s peachy, but it still causes problems.
THE SITUATION: I am a graphic designer, which means that I use photoshop a lot. Part of my job is the creation of gigantic publicity images which take up a lot of ram memory.
Lets suppose I make giant image A, save it, and then I close it. I make giant image B, save it, and close it. I make giant image C, save it, and close it. At this point, I have all my free memory taken up, and only have inactive memory left. Well, when I go to open up giant image A, it takes forever to load (10 to 20 minutes) and the computer slows to a crawl - even though there are no images or any other memory sucking programs open.
Or lets say that I have giant image A open, but I need to open giant image B and C. Same problem. Since I have no free memory, the system slows to a crawl. What has been my remedy? Force close photoshop, and reopen it. Upon doing this I have a ton of free memory, I can open images A, B, and/or C at the same time and they load at lightning speed (1 to 2 minutes, versus the 10 to 20 minute wait when my computer is relying on inactive memory).
WHAT I NEED: It is easy to say that this is all Adobe´s fault, or that the system´s regulation of memory is vastly superior to Windows, but that isn´t going to help me. What I need is an application, or technique where I can clear as much inactive memory as possible.
This is not a circumstance where I don´t understand what´s happening. I upgraded from 4 gigs of RAM to 6, and while the upgrade has helped it is only relieving a symptom of the problem and not the cause. In my line of work, I need to be able to work quickly and not have to rely on whether my system knows when to replace cached information.

I didn´t upgrade to 8 gigs of ram because I have an imac from 2007 with 4 gigs that does just fine. I needed a laptop and so decided on the macbook pro. As the macbook is newer, I imagined that it would go faster. I didn´t take into account that the new 10.6 system would need more memory, and that Adobe CS 5 would need much more memory than Adobe CS 4 - so I upgraded the memory a bit to make up for the difference.
I could buy even MORE memory, but it isn´t reasonable that a computer that´s 3 years old should be faster than the newest model professional laptop with the newest system and the newest applications. What´s more, I do not NEED more memory as the images I need to edit load very quickly whenever I free up inactive memory by force quitting photoshop. The fact that the images load quickly when there´s free memory, and slowly when there´s only inactive memory is proof that the RAM memory regulation is ineffective.
I do admit that this problem only occurs when I am creating large high quality images, and that memory regulation is not an issue 70% of the time. BUT since I´ve spent the last 2 weeks working on high quality images that measure 3x3 meters, I need a solution that will allow me to free up inactive memory.

Problem with Inactive memory

Well I recently upgraded my ram on my mid 2009 MBP to 8GB so i can do video editing, photoshop etc. But even with the upgraded ram my computer uses up basically all the memory for inactive memory. This is getting ridiculous, When i checked activity monitor today the inactive ram was 5.12GB! and the free ram was 23mb... This happens way too often, and everytime I have to manually fix this with the purge command in terminal. Its getting kinda annoying. If anyone has any suggestions, it would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Sean
P.S.
I have a 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 8GB of 1333 MHz DDR3
The computer is running 10.7 OSX Lion

Memtest version 4.22 (64-bit)
Copyright (C) 2004 Charles Cazabon
Copyright (C) 2004-2008 Tony Scaminaci (Macintosh port)
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 only
Mac OS X 10.7.3 (11D50b) running in multiuser mode
Memory Page Size: 4096
System has 4 Intel core(s) with SSE
Requested memory: 4873MB (5110022144 bytes)
Available memory: 4873MB (5110022144 bytes)
Allocated memory: 4873MB (5110022144 bytes) at local address 0x0000000101000000
Attempting memory lock... locked successfully
Partitioning memory into 2 comparison buffers...
Buffer A: 2436MB (2555011072 bytes) starts at local address 0x0000000101000000
Buffer B: 2436MB (2555011072 bytes) starts at local address 0x00000001994a6000
Running 2 test sequences... (CTRL-C to quit)
Test sequence 1 of 2:
Running tests on full 4873MB region...
Stuck Address       : ok
Linear PRN          : ok
Running comparison tests using 2436MB buffers...
Random Value        : ok
Compare XOR         : ok
Compare SUB         : ok
Compare MUL         : ok
Compare DIV         : ok
Compare OR          : ok
Compare AND         : ok
Sequential Increment: ok
Solid Bits          : ok
Block Sequential    : ok
Checkerboard        : ok
Bit Spread          : ok
Bit Flip            : ok
Walking Ones        : ok
Walking Zeroes      : ok
Test sequence 2 of 2:
Running tests on full 4873MB region...
Stuck Address       : ok
Linear PRN          : ok
Running comparison tests using 2436MB buffers...
Random Value        : ok
Compare XOR         : ok
Compare SUB         : ok
Compare MUL         : ok
Compare DIV         : ok
Compare OR          : ok
Compare AND         : ok
Sequential Increment: ok
Solid Bits          : ok
Block Sequential    : ok
Checkerboard        : ok
Bit Spread          : ok
Bit Flip            : ok
Walking Ones        : ok
Walking Zeroes      : ok
All tests passed! Execution time: 4588 seconds.

FCP Memory issue on a new MBP

I just bought a new 17" macbook pro with 4gb of ram. It's only a few days old. I'm having an issue with final cut pro 6 while trying to render or compress a file. Over the course of a few minutes, It transfers all of my memory from free to inactive memory and then either crashes or gives me an out of memory error. Meanwhile only a small portion is actually active. The same thing happens when I export using compressor.
I tried compresing the same exact file on my old powerbook G4 that has 1.5ghz of ram and it processes fine with plenty of free memory left over.
I have absolutely no clue what's causing this. I've adjusted the preferences, deleted them, deleted render files, ran FCP rescue, and nothings having an effect.
I don't think anything is wrong with the ram, because every other program works great.
Has anyone heard of this problem before? Any advice to what can be causing the problem? Please help!!

If you don't feel comfortable with this process, Brian's advice seems the best way to go.
That's exactly why I suggested it. Swapping RAM sticks in a MBP is a little bit tricky. I'm experienced at all that stuff, but the first time I did it on a MBP, I was a bit nervous.
And if you don't practice safe static control, you could do harm to the good sticks as well. (And you might never know you did it, as it doesn't always show up right away.)

OSX inactive memory management problems

On my 2010 Macbook Air 11" running OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion, I have run into some major issues with memory management. This problem persists across both my Mac machines and multiple generations of OSX. I have a 2007 2.2 Ghz Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro Running Lion (upgraded from Tiger) with 3 gb 667Mhz DDR2 RAM and my 2010 Air 1.4Ghz Core 2 Duo (Upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion) with 2gb 1067mhz DDR3 RAM. On both machines, for some time now, during normal usage; especially web browsing using Chrome and Safari (respectively); the inactive RAM on both machines will grow to consume around 30% of all RAM and force time consuming page outs to the mass storage drives on both machines. The Pro has a slower hard drive and the problem is the worst here, the air has a much faster SSD. I have found myself constantly having a window of Activity Monitor up on at least one of my desktops watching my RAM usage, using terminal to purge ram upwards of 10 times an hour to prevent costly page outs, especially on the Pro. I know Apple claims that inactive RAM is essentially free RAM that is temporarily storing recently used information for ease of access later and that it's supposed to be released as free memory when needed, but this obviously is not happening. Right now on my air my swap file is over 650Mb and I've seen it top 2Gb before. The air is exponentially better than the Pro due to the faster SSD, but I do notice substantial UI lag and a massive drop in fluidity as soon as my meager 2Gb is full and I start paging. The Pro is another story entirely, the entire system will essentially become unusable, having to wait several seconds for mouse clicks to even register. That's why I upgraded the stock 2Gb of RAM it comes with to 3Gb hoping that a 150% increase in RAM would help, but it just prolonged the inevitable. I still end up paging out just as bad across both systems if un checked. Even when I keep a close eye on memory usage and purge often, I still end up paging out because I'm not vigilant enough.
I have to limit my browsing to less than 5 tabs and keep my number of open programs less than 2 on both machines. My active and wired memory rarely seem to top 70%, meaning the rest gets taken by inactive, which isn't functioning as Apple claims. Even if my conclusions aobut what is happening under the hood are incorrect, something is going terribly wrong. I can't upgrade the RAM on my Air at all, and the RAM on my Pro is capped at 4Gb. I'm holding on upgrading because I don't think the excess hardware will solve this software memory problem. Whatever is happening is causing a serious drop in performance for me (yes I do know I have underpowered machines), but there has to be something I can do to speed performance. I've read about disabling the dynamic page file entirely, which just seems to crash the system when free memory is gone, and I've read about programs that claim to free memory. Those programs seem to work by taking a high priority in the process heigharchy of the OS and then proceeding to eat up large portions of RAM and releasing them as needed in an attempt to replicate the true intentions of inactive RAM, but I've heard of problems with this method as well. Does anyone have a viable solution? Monitoring my RAM usage myself and ensuring I don't end up paging out is costly, time consuming, annoying, and inefficient since I fail to catch the problem before I page if I get particularly busy. There is no other OS I've ever been acquainted with that has this problem, not any flavor of Linux, not even the dreaded windows. I seriously hope Apple can do something to manage this runaway memory problem. I'd like to be able to open more than 3 windows in Safari. I've had to purge 3 seperate times while writing this on my Air, and I now have 678 inactive memory, 741 inactive, 582 wired, and less than 14Mb free out of 2Gb with a growing swap at 680Mb. Each purge becomes less and less effective and the last one I did freed up only about 100Mb and it got eaten up again by inactive in less than 10 seconds. On my Air, the memory hog is Safari right now at 700Mb between the web content and flash player with only Facebook, youtube, and this Apple Supprt tab open. I have NO other applications running in the fore or background other than Activity Monitor and Terminal. On my Pro the memory hog is always kernel task, I use Chrome and Safari both. While the memory used by the browser does not usually take up the most substantial portion of the total used RAM out of any process, the more tabs I open, the more RAM I use. The browser is usually the second heaviest RAM hog to Kernel Task. So it seems that across the two machines there are two lsightly different manifestations of the same problem with the same results: massive performance drops and extremely annoying and costly page outs no matter the reason. I just want this problem to go away. I've used underpowered windows laptops that can open a dozen tabs in a heavier browser like IE or Firefox while using other programs like Word or Excel and more with no memory lag issues. There's no way in **** I could manage to open that many pages in a browser while using Pages and/or Numbers on either of my machines and expect reliable (swap free performance). This is just kind of sad in my opinion. Does anyone have a way to get my OSX machine running smooth so that I can remove the one thing that windows and Linux fan boys get the right to laugh at my Macs for?

Hi Zephryl,
I was actually able to get an initial response from Sun on this a few months ago. However, the Sun Swing team has not followed up on a resolution for this pervasive problem, even though they noticed the same problem when running a test applet I had created for them. Apparently, I.E. is not releasing memory from the heap.
Below is a quote from a Sun rep. on this in an e-mail sent to me on Dec 4, 2002:
"I suspected the leak is in the native code because the # of handles and GDI objects keep increasing but no obvious Java objects are left behind in the Java heap during page switch."
So, until Sun and/or Microsoft work out a solution to this, anyone who uses I.E. 6 and applets for their UI seems to be in a lot of trouble.
As a note, trying to invoke the Garbage Collector does not do anything, but generally a very small amount of memory will be released (like maybe 5-10% of the memory allocated for the applet).
Cheers!
Avi Gray
Global Computer Enterprises

Inactive memory takes all the memory - please help

I have a Macbook Pro - August 2009, upgraded version to 2.66 MHZ, advance display card, Dual core.
I recently upgraded the RAM to 8GB (Kingston) to clear more memory for my massive application use, the thing is it didn't solve anything because the issue I had problems with - Inactive Memory, wasn't resolved.
Inactive memory supposed to hold the memory for the apps you closed in case you'll run them once again, but it NEVER clears the memory, I can see the "blue" color taking all the free mem and the computer slows down! no free mem what so ever.
Now the Inactive mem grows enormously and gets to be more than 4GB, it has the same effect, the memory runs out!
Is there a way to fix it? I'm going crazy with that.. what a terrible design!
iFreeMem doesn't work on the 8GB, I'm at a loss..
Please help!
Thanks,
Eli.

Sounds like you have never done a PRAM reset or a SMC reset. Do both and see if this helps:
_SMC RESET_
• Shut down the computer.
• Plug in the MagSafe power adapter to a power source, connecting it to the Mac if its not already connected.
• On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and the power button at the same time.
• Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
• Press the power button to turn on the computer.
_PRAM RESET_
• Shut down the computer.
• Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
• Turn on the computer.
• Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
• Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
• Release the keys.
Roger

Memory leak versus inactive memory

Hi:
My iMac was becoming painfully slow a year or so ago. This seemed to be due to a lack of RAM, so I upgraded (2 GB to 4 GB total). This worked great, but now I seem to be running out of memory again, even when there are not a lot of programs open.
I’ve started tracking memory usage with Activity Monitor, and typically a huge chunk of my memory is “Inactive”. I.e., at this time I have 215 MB free, 450 MB Wired, 1.6 GB active, and 1.7 GB inactive. This despite only having Word, Outlook, OmniOutliner, Safari and iTunes open. Under System Memory (in Activity Monitor) it says Finder at 250 MB, Word at 131 MB, iTunes at 120 MB, Outlook at 80 MB, OO at 46 MB, and Dropbox at 34 MB (then a bunch of smaller usages). Even being very generous, the total memory usage only seems to add up to ~1GB, far short of the 4 GB installed.
I have no idea what a real “memory leak” actually is, but I’ve heard the term bandied about. I’ve had some weird, nonreproducible system crashes in the last few months where the system just totally freezes, often (but not always) putting a nice colour pattern on the monitors. Looking around, some folks have said that this might be due to a memory problem since everything else seems to check out AOK.
Thus, several questions:
Might I have a “memory leak”? If so, how do I diagnose and fix it?
What is the 1.7 GB of “inactive” memory being used for? Why is my Free memory so small when this big chunk of inactive memory is sitting there?
Thank you very much!
OS 10.8.2, 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

The way Safari accumulates memory is normal. The way it is trying to page the memory to disc and error-ing is not. I think the integrity of your disc volume / catalog and directories may be to blame.
Try a bit of basic maintenance:
Repairing permissions is important, and should always be carried out both before and after any software installation or update.
Go to Disk Utility (this is in your Utilities Folder in your Application folder) and click on the icon of your hard disk (not the one with all the numbers).
In First Aid, click on Repair Permissions.
This only takes a minute or two in Tiger, but much longer in Leopard.
Background information here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751
and here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302672
An article on troubleshooting Permissions can be found here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2963
By the way, you can ignore any messages about SUID or ACL file permissions, as explained here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1448?viewlocale=en_US
If you were having any serious problems with your Mac you might as well complete the exercise by repairing your hard disk as well. You cannot do this from the same start-up disk. Reboot from your install disk (holding down the C key). Once it opens, select your language, and then go to Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. Select your hard disk as before and click Repair.
Once that is complete reboot again from your usual start-up disk.
More useful reading here:
Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417?viewlocale=en_US
For a full description of how to resolve Disk, Permission and Cache Corruption, you should read this FAQ from the X Lab:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/repairprocess.html

Too Much Inactive Memory Useage

Hi,
I have a 2010 iMac running Mac OS X version 10.7.5.
I have upgraded to 16GB Ram but still have serious issues with the computer running slow sometimes are almost stopping because the memory usage seems to be too high.
I run quiet a few applications (mainly web browsers with multiple tabs). The main issue I see is the Inactive Memory is over 5GB. Is there a reason why this is so high? Is there a way to reduce the Inactive Memory?
Restarting the machine is a short term solution.
Thanks

Hi,
I have a 2010 iMac running Mac OS X version 10.7.5.
I have upgraded to 16GB Ram but still have serious issues with the computer running slow sometimes are almost stopping because the memory usage seems to be too high.
I run quiet a few applications (mainly web browsers with multiple tabs). The main issue I see is the Inactive Memory is over 5GB. Is there a reason why this is so high? Is there a way to reduce the Inactive Memory?
Restarting the machine is a short term solution.
Thanks

Inactive Memory leak in Safari 4.0.3

There is a memory leak in Safari 4.0.3. I haven't isolated it to a particular page since I usually have 15-20 tabs open when I notice the spinning ball, caused by VM paging. When this happens, according to Activity Monitor, Safari.app uses between 500-2000mb of "Real Memory", yet when I close it almost all of the blue "Inactive Memory" is released. The last time this happened, it freed 5.4gb.
This is getting annoying and is certainly bad for the SSD. Any idea if there's a fix?
BTW I've got the new Pro with 8 gigs of DDR3 and an SSD, and 20mbit FIOS internet... There is no excuse whatsoever for the spinning ball!

The way Safari accumulates memory is normal. The way it is trying to page the memory to disc and error-ing is not. I think the integrity of your disc volume / catalog and directories may be to blame.
Try a bit of basic maintenance:
Repairing permissions is important, and should always be carried out both before and after any software installation or update.
Go to Disk Utility (this is in your Utilities Folder in your Application folder) and click on the icon of your hard disk (not the one with all the numbers).
In First Aid, click on Repair Permissions.
This only takes a minute or two in Tiger, but much longer in Leopard.
Background information here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751
and here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302672
An article on troubleshooting Permissions can be found here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2963
By the way, you can ignore any messages about SUID or ACL file permissions, as explained here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1448?viewlocale=en_US
If you were having any serious problems with your Mac you might as well complete the exercise by repairing your hard disk as well. You cannot do this from the same start-up disk. Reboot from your install disk (holding down the C key). Once it opens, select your language, and then go to Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. Select your hard disk as before and click Repair.
Once that is complete reboot again from your usual start-up disk.
More useful reading here:
Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417?viewlocale=en_US
For a full description of how to resolve Disk, Permission and Cache Corruption, you should read this FAQ from the X Lab:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/repairprocess.html

I have a battery and Memory issue - late macbook pro 2011

Macbook Pro 13" Late 2011 Model
Battery Issue
After upgrading to Lion, my batter life is 3 hours after full charge. It was 7-8 hours in leopard.
Hoping this is a common issue and someone has a quick solution.
Memory Issue
I had 4GB Ram and found it would run to virtually nothing and not free any inactive RAM. I though the solution to this was to buy more RAM, which I did.
I now have 8GB RAM and it agains runs to virtually nothing on non labour intensive software like safari or mail. It doesnt free up any RAM when it reaches a certain point. Instead it freezes and I'm forced to restart the computer. I use Final Cut Pro X and Photoshop/Illustrator fairly regualry. I'm assuming the RAM is is used with those but even when these are closed the RAM is low.
Any ideas?
Cheers

You should take your Mac to an official apple retail store, as it is not common to have these problems regarding battery and memory.

My mac not using inactive memory

Hello,
I have a MacBook Pro, early 2011 version 10.6.8 / 2GHz Intel Core i7.
I had 4GB RAM originally but upgraded to 8GB.
I started having heat-up / fan issue about 3 months ago and brought my mac to apple store but it didn't solve any problem, so I tried upgrading the RAM. (My mac would heat-up and fan goes crazy much more often than before) It still didn't solve the problem. I have ADOBE products and use them often. 4GB to 8GB upgrade didn't make much difference.
I am kind of giving up with this issue, and am trying not to care... Today, I opened my mac, opened ADOBE Bridge and FireFox. When I was using ADOBE Bridge, the fan was going crazy, so I opened up the activity monitor and realized "INACTIVE" memory is very high and there was only like 10MB of free memory. From my understanding, I thought whenever more free space is needed, "INACTIVE" memory will be used, but my mac seems like it does not want to use the "INACTIVE" memory. Even after completely closing both ADOBE Bridge and FireFox by selecting QUIT, the "INACTIVE" memory is still over 5GB. All I did after opening my mac (not from sleep mode, but it was shut down before opening) was using ADOBE Bridge and FireFox. I closed both of the applications and the "INACTIVE" memory is still very high. Could anybody explain why this is happening and if this is normal? I attached a screenshot of the activity monitor I made when I was only using FireFox after quitting ADOBE Bridge. Thanks for your help!

Hello fmomade,
Some older video and software still requires an older version of QuickTime (version 7) that isn't included with Mountain Lion. It can, however, be downloaded and installed here.
Installing QuickTime Player 7
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3678
A Mac OS X v10.6, OS X Lion, and OS X Mountain Lion-compatible version of QuickTime Player 7 is available for use with older media or with AppleScript-based workflows. QuickTime Player 7 can be used to playback formats such as QTVR, interactive QuickTime Movies, and MIDI files. Also, it supports QuickTime 7 Pro registration codes for access to QuickTime Pro functionality.
To install QuickTime Player 7 on OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion
Download QuickTime Player 7 from here.
Double-click "QuickTimePlayer7.6.6_SnowLeopard". Note: This download is compatible with Mac OS X v10.6 or later.
QuickTime Player 7 will be installed in your Utilities folder.
Cheers,
Allen

Memory Issue - Inactive Memory?

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