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Installed a new HD and upgraded to 8GB of RAM a few weeks back...Sluggish performance

B

bliks

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 12, 2007
79
0
First off, I know it's not faulty RAM because I have a Windows partition on this drive and Windows is perfectly fine. It's only when I use Lion that the mid 2009 macbook pro acts up.

Random hangs that don't seem to be related to anything, black screens forcing me to hard restart the laptop pop up almost every time I watch a youtube video or whenever they feel like it. I can't take using Lion anymore because I never know when a crash is going to be right around the corner. It's a fresh install of Lion and the only app I generally have running is Radium and Chrome, so I'm no where close to taxing the system and I had more programs open and running and working fine with the stock 4GB without any problems.

Hopefully I can get some input from you guys!
 
bliks said:
First off, I know it's not faulty RAM because I have a Windows partition on this drive and Windows is perfectly fine. It's only when I use Lion that the mid 2009 macbook pro acts up.

Random hangs that don't seem to be related to anything, black screens forcing me to hard restart the laptop pop up almost every time I watch a youtube video or whenever they feel like it. I can't take using Lion anymore because I never know when a crash is going to be right around the corner. It's a fresh install of Lion and the only app I generally have running is Radium and Chrome, so I'm no where close to taxing the system and I had more programs open and running and working fine with the stock 4GB without any problems.

Hopefully I can get some input from you guys!
Click to expand...

Post a screen shot of Activity Monitor as well as using the drop down menu and selecting all processes.
 
All of the processes wouldn't fit in one screen shot, so here's the output in text.

http://pastebin.com/KnCtBN0p

Nothing in that made me think anything was wrong, but I'm no expert on what should and shouldn't be running in OSX.
 
depending on the processor you have on your mid 2009 your MBP may only support 6GB of ram, only the 2.66ghz & 2.93ghz support 8GB. If you still have the 2GB ram sticks try using 1 of the 2GB & 1 of the 4GB sticks and see if that clears it up.
 
tahoeroscoe said:
depending on the processor you have on your mid 2009 your MBP may only support 6GB of ram, only the 2.66ghz & 2.93ghz support 8GB. If you still have the 2GB ram sticks try using 1 of the 2GB & 1 of the 4GB sticks and see if that clears it up.
Click to expand...

Well crap, I've got the 2.8GHz. That kind of sucks that it doesn't fully support the 8. It shows that the computer has the full 8GB installed though.

Would a fresh install of lion help any? Maybe I just had a bad install?
 
I might be confusing early 2009 with mid 2009 models. Either way, you can try using one of the 2GB modules. Theres also an app in the mac app store called Mac Tracker that will give you all the technical details about your MBP including the maximum amount of supported ram.

A fresh intall would definitely let you know whether the problem is hardware or software.
 
tahoeroscoe said:
I might be confusing early 2009 with mid 2009 models. Either way, you can try using one of the 2GB modules. Theres also an app in the mac app store called Mac Tracker that will give you all the technical details about your MBP including the maximum amount of supported ram.

A fresh intall would definitely let you know whether the problem is hardware or software.
Click to expand...

I just checked that Mac Tracker app and my model does certainly support 8GB of RAM, so I'll try a reinstall tomorrow. It seems like that's the issue
 
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