I have a Macbook pro 15" mid 2009 and after using apple tv and downloading a movie yesterday I get an error message not enough memory to start up. I reset the pram and rhen reset the actual ram chips and it starts out better but something is grabbing all the memory. When I go to system monitor no one program seems to be causing the problem (under cpu) but when I go to network it show a lot of activity! Help?? any ideas what is causing this to happen. It was okay until after we played the movie???
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
MacBook Pro mid 2009 What is grabbing all the memory???
- Thread starter mariwenz
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Are you sure you were informed about too few MEMORY (RAM) and not STORAGE CAPACITY?
Making The Most of Activity Monitor
Have a look at Activity Monitor (( Applications / Utilities / ) and select All Processes and sort by Real Memory to see what the culprit may be.
image below uses sorting by CPU as an example
![4745264042_9c23afdbc9_b.jpg]()
Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
Making The Most of Activity Monitor
Have a look at Activity Monitor (( Applications / Utilities / ) and select All Processes and sort by Real Memory to see what the culprit may be.
image below uses sorting by CPU as an example
Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
Okay, I went to Activity Monitor and was looking under system memory and the page out kept getting larger and larger. It was over 10Gb at one time but I didn't look under All Processes. I will have to go back in when I get a chance. Thanks for the link. I will get back to the forum when I can get more info. Not able to right now.
My iMac is currently running for 23/28 days and look at its memory usage under the SYSTME MEMORY tab.
I don't know, as you didn't provide any other information. I was just responding to your "10GB of swapped memory" comment, as I have double of that and don't experience any slow down as you describe.
If you have the chance to get a look at Activity Monitor, look at the Real Mem usage and report back.
Maybe even take a screenshot like I did, so we can see your usage and provide better information.
Anyhow, how much storage capacity have you left on your HDD/SSD?