Memory Problems

smithy

smithy

designer.
Hi - well ive had my emac for a month now its a G4 1.25 with 1gb of ram but like i dont think the ram is fully working properly. Like i was reading somewhere today that your ram might not work properly if its not put in properly or something it doesnt work properly but i probly doubt that cause the system is saying 1gb or ram so yer.

I always have activity monitor open and in the dock as the cpu monitor icon yanno just to see whats happening. but now and again i always look at the memory part like at the moment i have some music playing in itunes safari open aswell msn messenger and just talkin to a friend and i have activity monitor open and this is the details of memory in activity monitor

used: 615.36 Free: 408.19 Wired: 100.06 Active: 144.09 Inactive: 377.06

VM Size: 3.73 Page ins/outs: 52212/0 Ram is 1024mb

now whats pageins/outs cause i posted her earlier with this problem and someone said to check this and i didnt know where to find it until today because yer i dunno. But like its just abit weird cause i have a feeling its lagging to much like even my sister said it was. like in microsoft word it lags quite abit but when launching programs it seems pretty fast.

Like i could be worrying about nothing and its just this computer is slow cause i couldnt afford to get a powermac g5 or g4 or even an imac. but yer can someone like jus compare theres to mine or whatever cause im thinking about ringing apple or takin it back to the apple store and i jus want some opionions...

Thanks for reading
 
You're memory is fine. Symptoms of faulty memory are things like random crashes and kernel panics. You don't have those so it is highly unlikely that your memory is bad.

MS Word is poorly written on the Mac, especially the Word 2004. See here for proof http://www.barefeats.com/wp.html. Could you define lagging a bit more? If it is resizing windows, it will be 'lagging' because that's the way OS X is.

Your memory consumption is fine too. You've got over 400 MB of memory free, and in your used memory, 377 MB is inactive which means that it contains the files used by programs you just closed and it works like a disk cache and will help speed up program launch times.
 
Well like i dont really mind about microsoft word lagging so much cause i dont really use it alot. but like in system preferences it takes sometimes awhile to change to different preference panes and also sometimes like switching to the applications folder in finder but then again like everything seems to always runs smoothly like i use the dock with magnifying on and the genie effect and i use expose' alot and i have music always running and everything seems to multi task pretty good... ah well i think i wont worry about aymore thanks viro

but can u please tell me what are page ins/outs i have a feeling its about the files with programs like saving and stuff.... thanks again
 
http://www.osxfaq.com/dailytips/03-2002/03-14.ws

One of the keys to coaxing the best performance out of Mac OS X is to give it plenty of RAM. The more you have, the less sluggish things feel regardless of your processor's speed.

Mac OS X is kind of insidious about this. Unlike Mac OS 9, you'll never (almost never) see a "not enough memory to do that" type message. Mac OS X uses its own superior virtual memory scheme to allow you to run programs far beyond what can fit in that 128MB of RAM. But... (there's always a but...)

The way it does that trick is to "page out" parts of RAM to your hard disk, substituting space on your hard disk for the RAM you so desperately need. The thing is, RAM, being solid-state, is about seventeen thousand trillion times faster than any mechanical disk. And so, the more paging out you've got going on, the slower things get in Mac OS X.

As I told you a few Freeware Friday's ago in this space, the easy way to find out how much paging out is going on at any given time is to run MemoryStick (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13636) with its Signal Pageouts option turned on. The more beeping you hear, the more additional RAM will speed up your particular Mac.
 
viro: The link's about Word X, not Word 2004. And: Word 2004 actually doesn't lag at all for me, so maybe we're talking about different Word 2004's? ;)

SysPrefs sometimes does lag because it actually has to _load_ the individual pref.panes (they're actually some special form of individual applications). I find WinXP's preferences lag far more, so I don't understand a switcher's problems with SysPrefs - unless your Mac is SEVERELY messed up, what I don't believe.
 
Well im trying that program that bobw recommended and im just testing it with having all mx suite open with quite large files aswell as photoshop with a large image and i have word open with a blank document aswell as music playing and talking to another friend aswell as using expose'. Well expose' is like not running as fast but hey i cant blame it to but everything is running rather smoothly and the music hasnt jolted at all. and activity monitor says:

Wired: 96.79 Active: 211.35 Inactive: 623.20 Used: 931.39 Free: 91.12 Vm size: 5.46
Page ins/outs: 50037/0 and ive turned on that beeping thingy with memory stick and nothings happened i think or i couldnt hear it cause i have music playing lol....... so yer i think its running fine now.. i tthink i was just worrying about nothing... anyways bye
 
dude have you like tried like using like OnyX? Maybe its a permissions problem? Sorry about the like's...there were just so many in your posts lol.
 
smithy said:
but can u please tell me what are page ins/outs i have a feeling its about the files with programs like saving and stuff.... thanks again
Click to expand...

Page-ins occur when stuff gets loaded into your main memory (i.e. RAM). On the other hand, page-outs occur when you don't have enough physical memory and data from main memory gets swapped out onto the hard drive. The more page-outs that occur, the higher the chance of you needing more memory.
 
hmm well thats interesting cause i just checked the activity monitor and the page outs/ins are now 97870/6313

argh this is way too confusing im gonna download that onyx thing in a moment so yer ill try that.
 
Those numbers are cool, man, don't worry. The more programs you open at one time, the higher the chance that your system will page out... but that's not a bad thing, that's just the virtual memory doing it's thing. It's perfectly normal. Also, the longer your system is running without a restart, the higher the chance your system will show pageouts, since you open and close programs all day and there's a good chance you'll open a bunch at once. Pageouts will not go down ever until you restart. That number you're seeing is a running tally of how many pageouts there have been since the last restart.

Your system is running fine, and your RAM is working just fine. It seems that the only reason you thought your RAM wasn't working right is because you looked at some numbers (which turned out to be perfectly normal numbers, by the way). Unless your computer is acting severely different, or you've experienced frequent crashes and freezes, you're making a big deal out of nothing.

Skip Onyx -- it'll only make you worry more -- and just keep using your computer as normal. You'll know for sure if it's not running right... there's not gonna be any questions like, "I THINK it's working, but I don't know... these numbers don't seem right." If it's not working right, it'll be up in your face and you'll know -- it'll crash and freeze, applications will quit on their own, logins won't work, etc.
 
Why would Onyx make you worry? If anything it'll serve as a placebo and make you feel good that you've done something to maintain your system ;)
 
I dunno, I just thought it would make him think about RAM usage even more, and if he's worried about RAM performance even without evidence of faulty RAM, then introducing concepts like "cache cleaning" and "cron scripting" and "log rotating" would possibly just increase the amount of worry.

I just think it makes it seem like OS X needs constant babysitting and attention to keep it running smoothly, which ain't true. Onyx isn't a necessity, especially in this case because it doesn't do anything to the RAM. OS X does a fine job on its own of doing maintenance, and "forcing" it to do the maintenance doesn't make OS X any better, faster, cleaner or more stable.
 
I disagree, what if apps are opening slow because of permission problems? I know you can fix that without OnyX but its easier for your average user to update prebindings and to run the daily,weekly, and monthly scripts than have to run them through the terminal. Don't use the cache cleaning functions, just run the scripts, verify and update the prebindings.
 
Manually re-prebinding under 10.3 is a thing of the past. It does not need to be done manually (that means via a terminal command, or using Onyx or any other prebinding application), nor will it yield any improvement whatsoever. OS X prebinds applications on-the-fly now, so doing it by hand is silly. That's like opening a Word document and then writing the contents down on a pad by hand instead of just printing the document -- why would you do it when the printer does it for you? Also, the daily, weekly and monthly cron scripts have NOTHING to do with Application launch times. All they do is rotate log files, update locate and netinfo databases and a few other trivial tasks... won't affect application launch times.

Besides, he mentioned nothing about applications launching slowly -- in fact, he said his computer is running just fine, and he only saw some numbers in the terminal that got him worried. That's the only thing that he mentioned. He said that he had all the MX apps open as well as PhotoShop (with big files, nonetheless) and also had iTunes playing music and the only thing he noticed was a slight slowdown with Expose, which is to be expected.

My advice in this situation: don't do anything. You computer is running as it should be. If you'd like to give Onyx a whirl, go for it, but it's not going to speed up anything, and it's just going to be one more thing to worry about running every now and then, even though you don't have to, since OS X does every maintenance task that Onyx does by itself, automatically. I would suggest keeping your OS X installation as clean as possible -- don't install anything you're not going to use on a regular basis and stay away from haxies. With a system like that, you'll rarely have to repair permissions, repair the disk, restart the computer or worry about much going wrong. Oh, and keep a good backup, just in case of a hardware failure.
 
Thanks for that - ElDiabloConCaca, thats really good advice and i think im gonna stick with it. Since ive had this mac only a couple of weeks or so ive learnt alot and ive got accustomned to it alot quicker compared to windows which ive been using for the past like 5-10 years or so around that and like working with osx is just way easier and quicker i guess. I think in the end being a new mac user i think i was just being a bit dumb of going about performance issues because for my new computer it was a toss up between a pc vs a mac. And man macs are madness like you get used to using things in mac like expose' and stuff that likie windows can't do and when u want to use a windows machine you just think of how great your mac is yanno. I thought when i first got a mac that i probly wouldnt be looking at gettin tiger but man when it comes out im getting it - and ill probly think about upgrading this emac to 2gb of ram with 2x1gb dimms. Hopefully that wont affect my warranty. Well anyways im gonna go thanks again for all of your replies i think i might unistall onyx and probly go and unistall all these other apps i dont need and probly reformat my old computer........ thanks again.
 
I've used many stand alone computers that have needed permissions repaired many times. It does happen, even apple says that by repairing permissions you can eliminate seemingly random problems. I've worked in network environments that have required that, I've worked in standalone environments that have required permissions being repaired. I know you said rarely diablo and sometimes it is rarely depending on your environment. I've used some very slow macs when after running a verify and repair performance has increased. I agree with diablo on the Haxies, stay away from they're only trouble waiting to happen.
 
Yeah, I admit that sometimes, certain computers with different combinations of software need permissions repaired more often than others. I guess I kinda like to keep a "clean house" when it comes to my Mac, and it seems to run great all the time -- but that's not saying that my setup should be everyone's setup -- everyone's got different needs, so tools like Onyx may be required on some machines and not others.

I didn't mean to say that you should go uninstall software that you're trying out -- by all means, try it out and see how it works for you. But for a new Mac user with a computer barely a month old, loading it up with all the gadgets and tools and tinker things without a specific need for them can lead to some problems later on (or, it may not).

We just want you to have the best Mac experience possible, and we've all got different suggestions on how to go about that, but ultimately, it's your Mac, and you'll find the best way to use it through experience and just playing around with it.

WeeZer51402's right -- Apple does suggest repairing permissions and running a disk repair with Disk Utility for solving a lot of problems, and those two things are among the first things you should try should you ever run into a problem. If those don't solve it, it's time to whip out some bigger guns, like Onyx or TinkerTool or DiskWarrior and give them a go...
 
Speaking of trying out apps does anyone know of any logs that keep track of whats installed where because often just dragging the .app to the trash doesnt uninstall it completely...I know this is off topic, well kinda at least.
 
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