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inactive memory rockets immediately after the startup - no appliction turned on

T

tonfisk

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 29, 2005
30
0
France
Hi,

I would like to ask a question about the inactive memory, a question that might be different from those already posted. It has been bothering me for quite a while. So please help!

I am on a 2Ghz Macbook with 1G ram. It used to start up very quickly without any problem. But recently (probably after updated to 10.4.10) it starts up much slower. And I notice in the Activity Monitor that the Inactive Memory soars from 123m up to over 600m, and then drops and stays at around 500m, immediately after I startup the computer and before I have started ANY application! Could anyone tell me why it is so? And at the same time, whenever I turn on Opera after the startup, the little O jumps for over 20 times on the dock before it is ready to go, and for Firefox the spinning beach ball comes up ...

Could anyone please help with this? Thank you in advance for suggestions!
 
Inactive memory is simply memory space that's "reserved" for a particular application. This memory isn't actively used at the time, it is merely mapped-out by applications that need it so another application doesn't steal the space needed. Of course, OS X dynamically manages this, so memory is fed to applications as needed.

I wouldn't really worry about the inactive memory usage, as a lot of OS X's processes simply request reserved memory at start. The only thing I would worry about is your recent slowdown. I would check in your startup items to ensure that there aren't any offending processes being loaded.
 
Some people have commented that they needed to do a PRAM reset (hold CMD-OPT-p-r when you turn on the Macbook) after 10.4.10 to address this issue. You may also repair permissions and verify the disk just to make sure nothing got amiss during the upgrade (as those things can do things like cause a long boot).

I wouldn't worry about the RAM unless you're getting a lot of pageouts.
 
Thank you Eidorian and mkrishnan, I have checked the page outs, it is most of the time pretty low (at this moment): page ins/outs: 41730/196. I guess it means safe ... good good :p

lag1090, as you suggested, I just went to library/StartupItems, and found only two folders, namely "Virex" and "VShieldEPOInterface"(maybe there are also hidden items? I don't know how to see them, though). I think I have uninstalled Virex long time ago. So do I just delete these two folders to prevent them from been started at the beginning?

Thanks again!
 
I have just done a PRAM reset, and I also used the tiger dvd 1 to verify and repair the disk (no problems were found). Unfortunately no significant changes have been realized for the startup. :(
 
tonfisk said:
lag1090, as you suggested, I just went to library/StartupItems, and found only two folders, namely "Virex" and "VShieldEPOInterface"(maybe there are also hidden items? I don't know how to see them, though). I think I have uninstalled Virex long time ago. So do I just delete these two folders to prevent them from been started at the beginning?

Thanks again!
Click to expand...

Yes, that's all you really need to do. I would also use the Activity Monitor app in the Utilities subfolder of Applications to see if there are any particular processes consuming a significant amount of memory. If that doesn't turn up anything, the worst-case scenario would be reinstalling OS X. If that didn't solve the problem, then I would suspect it to be some sort of hardware problem.
 
Yeah I have deleted those startup virex folders and a restart seems to be slightly quicker (or just my illusion). I guess there is nothing more I can do at this moment. Maybe I have to let it be and see what comes up next ... At least the machine is still in warranty. Thank you all!
 
Found the problem

I was suggested to put the Activity Monitor on the startup to see what is going on. Then I read a process called "update_prebindin" that consumes a lot of CPU and memory at the startup. Google says it is from the APE, which comes together with the Logitech Control Center I installed weeks ago. The solution I used is to go to Unsanity's website and download the latest version of APE, then use this image to totally uninstall the current version in my macbook. Now the laptop starts up much better, and I still have a lot of green memory after having used the machine for a while. Very good! :-D
 
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