does RAM get old?

[native00]

About a year and a half ago, I bought some RAM for my 15" PB. It was when the 1.25 model had just come out and the people at ChipMerchant weren't quite sure what RAM the machine would prefer. They tried some Kingston RAM, but I got all kinds of kernel warnings, so I took it back. They put some generic stuff in there and it worked like a charm.

Fast forward a year and a half, and after I installed Tiger I got all kinds of apps taking longer to operate. Sometimes Firefox even crashes after that rainbow circle runs for a few secondsand I'm seeing that damn rainbow circle with quite a few apps. So I'm wondering if you think this is a RAM issue and whether or not RAM gets old or prefers different OS?

 

[Heb1228]

RAM issues usually show up in Kernel panics. Tiger is more picky about the RAM it likes than Panther was, but your problem doesn't sound like bad RAM to me. Are you having problems with your Mac waking from sleep? If not, then I think your RAM is probably fine. Also, look in "About this Mac..." and see how much RAM it says is installed.

I get that same problem in Firefox sometimes, I think its a problem in TIger and 10.4.3 will fix it.

 

[alexstein]

i don't think ram gets old but newer os', application and programs are sometimes bigger and sometimes need more ram to operate properly. my question is how much ram did you purchase in the first place. and on top of that tiger seems to be very ram hungry.

 

[CanadaRAM]

If the RAM was marginal for compatibility, you may be experiencing 10.4's tightened specifications. Presumably if you bought lifetime warranty Mac-guaranteed RAM the vendor will replace it for you.

 

[Sun Baked]

Run Disk First Aid (from Disk Utilities on the DVD) and/or fsck (from single user mode) ... check for file/catalog errors -- keep running either until all errors are corrected, or no more can be done.

Also see what Disk Utilities says about the SMART status of the drive.

The drive may be going bye-bye, or simply the file/catalog is a little screwey at the moment (either of these will cause a bunch of beach balls.)

Edit: Of course bad RAM will do the same thing, and will also corrupt the drive.

 

[native00]

Run Disk First Aid (from Disk Utilities on the DVD) and/or fsck (from single user mode) ... check for file/catalog errors -- keep running either until all errors are corrected, or no more can be done.

Also see what Disk Utilities says about the SMART status of the drive.

The drive may be going bye-bye, or simply the file/catalog is a little screwey at the moment (either of these will cause a bunch of beach balls.)

Edit: Of course bad RAM will do the same thing, and will also corrupt the drive.

So I should run this off of the Tiger Disk as opposed to the one on my HD?

 

[FocusAndEarnIt]

correct.

 

[native00]

...alright, so I ran Disk Utilities off of the Tiger Install Disk. The only viable option I saw to select was Verify and Repair Permissions. It kept correct a permission on the Library/widgets and thats its. The SMART Status was verified. I dont know where to go from here...thanks for all the help so far.

 

[CanadaRAM]

...alright, so I ran Disk Utilities off of the Tiger Install Disk. The only viable option I saw to select was Verify and Repair Permissions. It kept correct a permission on the Library/widgets and thats its. The SMART Status was verified. I dont know where to go from here...thanks for all the help so far.

You should also have seen a Repair Disk option on the right hand side of the dialog box. This is active when you choose the volume from the list of drives on your left.

So far, it is saying your disk is OK... but reboot with Tiger CD again and do the Repair Disk to see if there are any errors caught/corrected.

 

[native00]

So I ran it off the disk the "right way", meaning using the Tiger Install as the Start-Up Disk. It made a minor repair to the Volume Bit Map (it had an invalid free block count) and thats it. I ran it twice.

So, since nothing is apparently wrong with the drive I am wondering how often you all see the "beachball"...per hour I guess would be a good place to start. i probably see it like 2-3 times and it runs anywhere from 1 second to like 10 seconds. And...just so you know, I have the 1.25 15" PB with 768 of RAM and 80GB HD, Superdrive.

 

[jeremy.king]

If you just installed Tiger you may just be seeing slowdowns because Spotlight is indexing in the background - Dashboard too is known to consume a bit of memory. Take a look at CPU and memory usage in Activity Viewer (or use top in Terminal) and record any high CPU or high memory Applications/Processes.

 

[jared_kipe]

RAM does get old, but not that fast.

 

[yenko]

................. It made a minor repair to the Volume Bit Map (it had an invalid free block count) and thats it. I ran it twice.
..................

That's enough to cause the problems with the spinning beach ball. Now you have to determine what caused it. Usually forced shutdowns corrupt installs or bad RAM. There may be others, but in my book, these are the top three.

 

[native00]

Here's pics of the Activity Monitor. For some reason I took them without Safari in use, which uses about 35.5 MB of RAM. Couldn't tell you what half of these things in use are...maybe you can tell me if all this activity is normal.

 

[jeremy.king]

Thinking out loud....

I wonder if Norton could be causing some of the issues. Although not taking up much mem or cpu, its been known to dominate attention and slow everything down...Some would recommend against using it, although I see some value.

Otherwise, nothing really out of whack there that I am seeing.

 

[slooksterPSV]

Thinking out loud....

I wonder if Norton could be causing some of the issues. Although not taking up much mem or cpu, its been known to dominate attention and slow everything down...Some would recommend against using it, although I see some value.

Otherwise, nothing really out of whack there that I am seeing.

Ooo I think you could be right, I've heard nothing, but bad things about norton on mac. Just horrible things.

 

[Eniregnat]

Yes it gets old. The platform or OS isn't as much a factor (or a factor at all) as much as it's use and abuse. At first when memory fails it might only do it when it has been in use for a while, usually during a memory intensive application, or when hot. Later, it will fail, and usually the failure will be detected on os start, and depending on the failure, it ether will be recognized (and make the system unstable- kernel panic) or it will be ignored.

In general I have noticed the faster the memory, the sooner it crashes. Now given this, in the non-Mac studio that I admin, the DDR has failed on 4 machines after they ran heavily used for 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week.

This is just my expierence.