Memory problems: computer freezes on heavy memory usage

Ever since I changed the internal hard drive of my MacBook Pro (I installed a Seagate Barracuda 1Tb disk), I have the following problem:
Whenever an application needs a lot of memory (for example Parallels installing a new Windows system, or Acrobat Pro optimizing a big PDF file), the computer progressively freezes. What I mean by freezing is that I can still move the mouse cursor, but clicking has no effect, and there is no interaction whatsoever with the GUI. Even the clock on the menu bar stops.
I never had the problem before. I guess that under normal conditions the Finder will always keep a few Mb of RAM for its own use. After all I have 4Gb of RAM installed.
Is there some way I can prevent the computer from freezing? Has this something to do with VM? Ever since I changed the hard disk, this problem happens once or twice every day, and the only solution is to force a restart, losing all my work…
Thanks in advance for any advice…

First, do not assign more than half your available RAM to a VM. It's best to let the VM software's configuration to select the amount used by its defaults.
Second, watch how many concurrent applications you attempt to use. Monitor your memory usage in Activity Monitor. If the Available RAM (Inactive RAM plus Free RAM) is low and Free RAM is near zero, then you have too many concurrent applications running. This forces the system to start using the disk-based virtual memory file. With too many apps swapping into the vm file disk thrashing will occur that ultimately can lead to the computer appearing to freeze up or to actually freeze up.
Of course your alternative is to install more RAM if in fact you are over-taxing what you have now. You may find the following helpful reading:
About OS X Memory Management and Usage
Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
Memory Management in Mac OS X
Performance Guidelines- Memory Management in Mac OS X
A detailed look at memory usage in OS X
Understanding top output in the Terminal
The amount of available RAM for applications is the sum of Free RAM and Inactive RAM. This will change as applications are opened and closed or change from active to inactive status. The Swap figure represents an estimate of the total amount of swap space required for VM if used, but does not necessarily indicate the actual size of the existing swap file. If you are really in need of more RAM that would be indicated by how frequently the system uses VM. If you open the Terminal and run the top command at the prompt you will find information reported on Pageins () and Pageouts (). Pageouts () is the important figure. If the value in the parentheses is 0 (zero) then OS X is not making instantaneous use of VM which means you have adequate physical RAM for the system with the applications you have loaded. If the figure in parentheses is running positive and your hard drive is constantly being used (thrashing) then you need more physical RAM.

Similar Messages

Computer Freezing due to memory

Hello to everyone ...
Hoping some of you clever people can help me out with this one.
I have just put together a new rig with specs as follows ....
K8N Neo2 Platinum nForce3
Athlon 64 4000+ San Diego
4 x 512MB OZC Platinum EL Dual Channel Kit PC3200 DDR400 CL 2-2-2-5 Revision 2
ATI Radeon X800 XT GPU
1 x SATA drive
2 x IDE drive
2 x DVDRW drives
550W Truepower PSU
I think thats all the important stuff ....
Well once I built it all up I turned it on and got winXP SP2 installed. After about 3 minutes the comp frooze and mouse/keyboard was unresponsive. I hit the reset button as this was my only option.
Comp rebooted and then again after about 2 minutes it frooze again.
This went on with the intervals being from 30 seconds to 5 minutes but without fail it crashed.
I immediately suspected the memory so went down that road.
I removed both modules from dimms 3 and 4 to leave 1GB across dimms 1 and 2. As expected it booted up fine and the bios post displayed the memory running as DDR400 instead of the DDR333 which is the maxium when both Dimms 1 and 3 are occupied ( :( Anyone actually know why that is or if there is a way to up the timings back to 200 from 166 ? )
I then spent the next 3 hours installing all drivers/games/updates etc and flashed the BIOS up to v1.8
I then stuck the two modules back in and booted up hoping the BIOS flash would have resolved this bug.
But no luck again. After about 3 minutes it frooze again.
I took out the modules from Dimms 1 and 2 and booted back up.
Again I spent the whole day on the comp without a single freeze so that rules out the memory being faulty.
So can anyone help me or offer any advice to get it stable with the four Dimms occupied ?
Would I be better to send back 1GB and just run with 1GB @ DDR400 ?
Please, any suggestions i'd be very greatful.
All motherboards settings and timings are on 'Fail-Safe Defaults' so its nothing to do with messing about with timings or clock speeds etc
Thanks guys

Quote from: Gboyd on 29-June-05, 23:17:31
I think from looking around the memory voltage is set to 2.5v currently. Should I up this to 2.75v ?
Yes, put it at 2.75v
Quote
It says from that link that they are under warranty up to 2.9v so its worth a shot ?
Not at this time.
Quote
How much loss of speed does running at DDR333 with 2GB and 2T ?
It depends on what you need the 2 Gb of memory to.
Quote
Is it better to be running 1GB @ DDR400 and 1T ?
Not worst or better just a bit faster but with less memory.
Be well....

K9n neo stability problems, computer freezes hd light stays on! help!

Newly built system having stability problems. The computer crashes when loading and exiting programs, seams to me like it is ram related. When the system crashes the hard drive light remains lit. I have an elixer 667mhz ram module. Heres the system spec:
msi K9n neo
athlon 3500 am2
elixer 667mhz ram
gforce 7300le
sata mextor 80gb
350w power supply
I am unsure of the ram timing setting and voltage, i just set them to auto please can someone tell me what could be wrong is elixer compatible with this mobo?
thanks

There is appearently a compability problem with the AM2 K9N boards and
nvidia 7300 turbocache gfx cards (turbocache use system memory as added VGA mem)
See:
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=99557

Starting problems, computer freezes, keyboard and mouse stop working

Hi can anyone help? My powerbook has just stopped working, rarely starts, when it does keyboard and mouse stop working after a while or even before i am able to login. At one point I was getting a grey screen with the words, memory access invalid???? Please help...
powerbook G4

power surge could have damaged something inside, or it maybe unrelated to the problem.
PowerBook can get hot if there is some short circuit inside and power flow is disrupted, also it's possible that the fans are not working properly.
as a guess, it is likely either hard drive or logic board problem.

Problem - computer freezes every time a 3D game / Wine game is run

Hello. My brother's computer is a quite powerful machine. He would be very satisfied with it if it wasn't for one thing: it freezes every time he runs any 3D game or any game using Wine.
I have tried to do some troubleshooting, but after long time I still cannot find the cause. The problem persists. No update has fixed it yet.
Some 3D games seem to run, some don't. I have tried AssaultCube and it worked, but when I tried Sauerbraten it froze.
Wine games seem not to work at all, or at least that's my general impression. As a test, I tried a freeware DirectX 7 game. Froze straightaway. More complex games of course also froze.
The problem seems to be related either to hardware or to some NVidia-specific stuff. I tried a test run of XP on this computer. It ran when it was a clean install, but when I installed NVidia drivers, it didn't boot again correctly. There was no error description as far as I remember.
I have swapped a power supply to a higher wattage thinking that it maybe was energy starvation that took the system down. No luck.
Output of different commands:
"hwinfo --short": http://pastebin.com/Sj8SbvZy
"lsmod": http://pastebin.com/dtchwqAF
"pacman -Qi nvidia": http://pastebin.com/rhKcLUpH
"uname -a": "Linux 2.6.35-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Aug 21 07:23:08 UTC 2010 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux"
One more thing. Even though it's a 64-bit CPU, I'm running a 32-bit system. Would that create a problem? From what I've read online, it doesn't really seem to make that much of a difference.
Please help me with this. I really don't know what to do.

hello again.
glxinfo looks good and normal
Right.. i have been reading bout similiar issues ..like that of your system freezing..
a reported fix would be to
echo 1 | tee /sys/devices/system/cpu/sched_mc_power_savings
as root
and add it to the /etc/rc.local for it to be applied every boot up..
Link of where i have gotten the info from
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … bug/151382
Apart from that , i have noticed your kernel isnot up to date.. Please run your updates.. the latest kernel in the core repo at the time of writing is 2.6.36.
Hope it works out for you
and if the above doesnt work out..
i would need to see your
/var/log/Xorg.0.log
Have a good day

Login Problems: computer freezes except in safe boot.

My MBP 15" starts up fine in safe boot. But:
First, it froze at the login screen. After following the directions from:
http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/help/2/#2
I was able to boot back into my account. But once my desktop appeared, the computer froze: the mouse cursor moves, but that's it.
I made a NEW admin account. Logged in, was able to click on Mail.app, but the icon froze MID BOUNCE, and the same thing holds true: NO keyboard input works. The CAPS LOCK key responds (light goes on and off). Same for NUM LOCK.
I have removed all third part Startup Items. There are no login items.
ANy help would be really appreciated.

Hi..
I had the same problem after doing the software upgrade from apple. I could log in with SafeMode as well. I called AppleCare and they took me through re-installing the operating system.
All works fine now.
Thanks,
Kane

Memory problems - WIN 2K, service pack 4 with Oracle 9.2.0.4.0

We have a Win 2K server that is running Oracle Server 9.2.0.4.0. Recently we upgraded to NT service pack 4 and have been experiencing memory problems - running out of process memory. We think that Oracle may be causing this, as we have done some troubleshooting. What may be happening is that every time we make an Oracle call, there is some kind of memory leak that is occurring. This is related to connecting to the C runtime.dll.
Is this familiar to anyone, or does anyone know where I can locate some documentation about this?
Thanks!

I think it is not so hard issue. there could be many reason for this. I will suggest that first you should increase virtual memory of your OS and then examine the performance. SP4 is basically security pack and most MS SP related to Securities issues they do not increase system burden.

Problem with Firefox and very heavy memory usage

For several releases now, Firefox has been particularly heavy on memory usage. With its most recent version, with a single browser instance and only one tab, Firefox consumes more memory that any other application running on my Windows PC. The memory footprint grows significantly as I open additional tabs, getting to almost 1GB when there are 7 or 8 tabs open. This is as true with no extensions or pluggins, and with the usual set, (firebug, fire cookie, fireshot, XMarks). Right now, with 2 tabs, the memory is at 217,128K and climbing, CPU is between 0.2 and 1.5%.
I have read dozens of threads providing "helpful" suggestions, and tried any that seem reasonable. But like most others who experience Firebug's memory problems, none address the issue.
Firefox is an excellent tool for web developers, and I rely on it heavily, but have now resorted to using Chrome as the default and only open Firefox when I must, in order to test or debug a page.
Is there no hope of resolving this problem? So far, from responses to other similar threads, the response has been to deny any responsibility and blame extensions and/or pluggins. This is not helpful and not accurate. Will Firefox accept ownership for this problem and try to address it properly, or must we continue to suffer for your failings?

55%, it's still 1.6Gb....there shouldn't be a problem scanning something that it says will take up 300Mb, then actually only takes up 70Mb.
And not wrong, it obviously isn't releasing the memory when other applications need it because it doesn't, I have to close PS before it will release it. Yes, it probably is supposed to release it, but it isn't.
Thank you for your answer (even if it did appear to me to be a bit rude/shouty, perhaps something more polite than "Wrong!" next time) but I'm sitting at my computer, and I can see what is using how much memory and when, you can't.

Computer freeze / Memory problem?

Hi,
I assembled my new PC approx. 1 month ago (full spec attached at the bottom of the message).
Since then I'm having a lot of freezes (freeze, not BSOD). I tried using several OS versions with no luck, so I though it's a memory problem.
Testing the memory, each dimm by itself, with memtest86+ succeeded. I even tried to check each of the memory banks and the test still succeeded.
When testing with more than one dimm (both with single-channel and dual-channel configuration) I'm getting freezes during the check.
What could be the problem?
Thanks!
The full spec:
Case: Thermaltake Armor+ ESA VH6001BWS
PSU: Thermaltake ESA 850W
CPU: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650
CPU Cooler: Thermaltake BigWater 780e ESA
Motherboard: MSI P7N2 Diamond (Bios version is 1.1, this also occurs at 1.0)
Memory: 4 x OCZ DDR3 PC3-12800 Platinum 2GB (OCZ3P16004GK), 8GB Total
Sound card: MSI X-Fi Xtreme Audio (the one that is bundled with the P7N2)
GPU: MSI GeForce 280 GTX OC
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1 - x64 edition
The system is not overclocked at all, All the bios settings are set to default.

Quote from: John_Doe on 18-January-09, 02:38:37
OK, That's what I did:
Changed back the clock speed to auto (it was auto set back to 1333MHz), Changed the voltage of the memory and the NB back to "Auto".
Then I changed the memory to work as 9-9-9-24 and tested it with 2 dimms in a dual-channel configuration.
So far, It's looks like it's working and working well (2 passes completed successfully).
Quote from: John_Doe on 18-January-09, 02:38:37
Assuming that the tests will go smooth, I would like to ask if this is a recommended configuration to stay with (1333MHz, voltages at "Auto", memory set to 9-9-9-24)?
Running those dimms not at overclocked & overvoltaged (and even in "lower speed" then it should) should prevent them from having short lifetime, Am I right?
Yes, because their DDR3 chips have been designed to work at 1333MHz with 9-9-9-24.
"Have been tested to work at 1600" is another fish in another (OCZ) ocean.
good luck

I have not been able to use iTunes for several months. Every time I open iTunes, it freezes by computer such that there is about a minutes between each action. I am running iTunes 11 on Mac OS 10.6.8 and have a computer with maxed out memory.

I have not been able to use iTunes for several months. Every time I open iTunes, it freezes by computer such that there is about a minutes between each action. I am running iTunes 11 on Mac OS 10.6.8 and have a computer with maxed out memory. Help! I can't access my iTunes content.

I have not been able to use iTunes for several months. Every time I open iTunes, it freezes by computer such that there is about a minutes between each action. I am running iTunes 11 on Mac OS 10.6.8 and have a computer with maxed out memory. Help! I can't access my iTunes content.

Powerbook G4 freezes on me - memory problems..?

Hi all,
I have just bought a new Powerbook G4 15inch as i read all sorts of varying articles on Macbook Pro's teething problems with Adobe etc so decided to go for the tried and trusted good old Powerbook.
So i got the retailer to boost it from 512mg to 2gb in the shop and after giving it a good workout (installing Illustrator, photoshop, microsoft etc) and playing with Itunes i find that it freezes on me every 15mins or so..! I'm told it could be a memory problem (maybe the 2 new 1gbs are not compatible). Or should i reinstall Tiger..?
Any advice is welcome.. help..!
G4 powerbook 15inch Mac OS X (10.4.2) 1.67GHZ 2gigabytes 100GB

Hello, Shane,
No, I've not had trouble with freezes on my powerbook. I did have a little trouble clicking in the RAM on the top slot properly, both on my PB and on a friend's, but in these cases, the PB beeped three times on startup (RAM "distress signal").
It has been my understanding that system freezes are often caused by faulty hardware--RAM, a peripheral device that is misbehaving, or a more serious problem such as logic board.
Running the hardware test in extended mode would help with this.
Some people have reported that they have solved system freezes when all the hardware checks out by doing an archive/installation of their operating system, or erasing the drive and re-installing from scratch.
Good luck.
Maxit
Message was edited by: Maxit
I also would be remiss in not pointing out that since your Powerbook is new, Apple is available to help you troubleshoot, and in case there is a serious hardware issue, making an early report is advisable.

Memory Problems with Adobe PDF iFilter for 64-bit

In preparation to rebuild my Windows Search Index, I installed the Adobe PDF iFilter for 64-bit on my system (Vista Business 64). When I finally rebuilt the index, I wasn't too surprised by what I saw happen, namely, the SearchFilter.exe process would kick in whenever I wasn't using the system and just eat RAM. One time I turned it on and it had allocated over 4,000 MB (and my system only has 4,030 MB available) so of course it was forcing all the other processes to hard fault (ie. everything was moving like molasses--for example, it took 20 minutes to put the thing to sleep). But I just let it do it's work, figuring that perhaps this was to be expected relative to the small library of PDF's that I've accumulated on my computer, ranging from LaTeX generated text files, to containers for hi-res scans. So, after a day and a half of basically not using my laptop, everything finally calmed down and I enjoyed the benefits of searching the content of my library from the Windows Start menu--for a short while.
However, to my dismay I've encountered the problem that this freezing of my computer would now occur after everytime I download a new PDF (in this particular case they were Google Books scans) and then left the computer to idle. Again, the SearchFilter.exe would allocate all of my RAM for itself and just push everything else onto the Virtual RAM, which means the SLOWEST possibly fetching you can get. I had to uninstall as this was making my computer unusable for 15-30 minutes after each idle. Everything is back in working order without the iFilter, but I would like to know if anyone has reported such problems on x64 systems. Obviously, I will also report the problem to Microsoft, since the search engine should certainly have the precaution to handle such memory problems.   However, it is a problem that is created by the Adobe PDF iFilter interacting with the Windows Search engine.

Hello,
We believe we have figured this out. It looks like it has to do with the length of the default folder location for the Adobe iFilter.
I was able to reproduce the issue and the following resolved it for me. See if this resolves it for you all as well.
Here is how to get Adobe Version 11 PDF filter to work.
1 . If you haven’t already, run the following in SQL Server:
Sp_fulltext_service ‘Load_os_resources’, 1
Go
--you might also need to run:
sp_fulltext_service ‘Verify_signature’,0 --This is used to validate trusted iFilters. 0 disables it. So use with caution.
--go
2. Stop SQL Server. (Make sure FDHost.exe stops)
3.
Uninstall the Adobe ifilter (because it defaulted to having spaces or the folder name is too long).
4.
Reinstall the Adobe iFilter and when it prompts for where to install it, change it to: C:\Program Files\Adobe\PDFiFilter
5.  Once the installation finishes, go the computer’s Environment variables. Add the following to the PATH.
C:\Program Files\Adobe\PDFiFilter\BIN
NOTE: it must include the BIN folder
NOTE: If you had the OLD location that included spaces, remove it from the path environment variable.
6. Start SQL Server
7.  IF you had an existing Full-text index on PDFs, drop the full-text index and recreate it.
8. You should now get results when you run sys.dm_fts_index_keywords('db','tblname') --Note: Change db to be the actual database name and tblname to be the actual table name.
Give this a try and see if this fixes yours.
Sincerely,
Rob Beene, MSFT

Edit in HD, memory problem?

Hi there,
Just starting for editing HD footage but wondering should I get more memory for computer because testing to editing a 15 min. footage when export only first 2-5 min. movie I got, the rest is a still image (only last freeze frame when reach 5 min.). After that, I've tried to cut the footage in 2 min. than export fine. Is that the memory problem? Please advice.
Thanks.

Hi
a. Free space on Start-up Mac OS hard disk. How much ?
b. Is there any more hard disks ?
I have figured that my Mac works best with
• Macintosh HD / Mac OS and FinalCut
• Second internal HD - ALL Scratch and All material Audio/Photos etc. on this
Nothing to movie project on first one
alt
second HD as a FireWire - and IMPORTANT - Mac OS Extended formatted ! !
Yours Bengt W

S10e freezes on advanced memory testing

Hi,
My Ideapad S10e started acting up lately, I tested the hdd for bad sectors and it was clean so I started testing the RAM using both Memtest86+ & Windows Memory Diagnotics and using all of the following RAM configuration:
onboard 512MB only
onboard 512MB + 512MB in the slot (as It was when I purchased)
2 GB SODIMM stick in the slot, DDR2 667Mhz by Kingston.
In all of which standard tests passed but when I used either the Extended test in Windows Memory Diagnostics or when using Probe mode for sizing in MEMTEST86+ the test freeze, in the Windows Memory Diagnostics instance I can still change settings and exit the program regularily but the extended test hangs at 21%.
With MEMTEST86+ Probe mode the computer freezes altogether and I have to turn it off and back on.
Any ideas what could be the problem?
Can this be a problem with the onboard RAM? I hope not.
My S10e is long past it's warranty period btw.
Also, I forgot to mention that the problems that caused me to start testing all of these remained after reinstalling my OS from scratch, so it isn't software related.

Yes, I did, I even said it in my post that I tried all configuration.
2 GB Stick
1 GB - Embedded onboard + 512MB stick (original configuration)
Onboard embedded 512MB only.
Same result every time.
The thing is, I eventually re-inserted the original configuration and decided to work with it for a few days, been a day, in which I only got to work on it for a few hours, so far the computer seems stable, if it'll remain that way that means that the S10e got some issue with that kingston 2GB DDR2 667MHZ stick, however if the problems will re-surface that means I'm probably screwed.
I guess I'll see in a few days.

Memory issues - kernel panics / system freezes with 1Gb Memory Card

I've recently updated my PowerBook OS to 10.4.7 and now more recently 10.4.8.
Prior to this, i had been running a pair of pc2700 memory cards (1x1Gb + 1x 512Mb) bought from crucial technology on 10.3.9 with no problems.
During the upgrade, i experienced complete system lock ups and kernel panics. pulling the 1Gb card resolved the problem.
So i thought it could be duff memory (it happens). I ran hardware checker, both long and short tests, ran memchecker from single user and there was no reported errors although i was still getting crashes.
I returned the memory to crucial and they replaced it and then i went to reinstall memory in the pb.
Once reinstalled, problems re-emerged. Both System profiler and iStat pro show both memory sticks as ok. both are pc2700 DDR.
i tried just the 1 Gb stick in alternate memory slots. with the memory in the lower slot i was getting system freezes, in the top slot i was getting kernel panics.
I've pulled the 1Gb and reverted to 768Mb (512Mb lower (crucial)/ 256MB (apple) upper) and i'm back to normal.
Now what?
As my mac is getting on, i'd like to get as much RAM in it as i can, ideally the 1.5Gb /2Gb which it can support. I'd be suprised if it could be the memory stick being duff (2 duff in a row?), its not a faulty memory slot as system profiler is showing that its full.
Any suggestions? Anything to do with how 10.4.8 handles the memory addressing?
Any help would be appreciated.
PowerBook G4 1Ghz FW800 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I've had that problem, too. I found out that it was one of my memory modules that were broken.
I'd say pop back in your other memory module, then get out your PowerBook DVD and stick it in Restart your PowerBook while holding down the Option Key on your keyboard until some buttons start to show up on your screen.
Select the Hardware Test one, then click the Arrow button. It'll boot into a utility and you can run a hardware test that includes checking your memory.
If any of your memory is bad, it'll show up like "**ERROR ERROR**" and give you a code.
After you've identified the hardware problem (hopefully just the RAM), then you can go to Crucial's website and fill out an RMA request to have the memory replaced. I'm pretty sure Crucial has a life-time warranty on their memory products.

Memory problems: computer freezes on heavy memory usage

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