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Macbook Pro running slow with pinwheel

B

brittrose911

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 15, 2013
2
0
Hi,

I have had my macbook pro for 3 years but I feel like I still don't know much about it. This is the 1st time I am having a problem.

I opened activity monitor & obviously I am running a lot of crap that I dont know how to shut down.

If I go into system memory:
Free: 39.4mg!! Hello big problem VM Size: 115.84GB
Wired 628.3mg Page in: 3.67gb
Active 2.16gb Page out 1.90gb
Inactive 1.19gb Swap used 2.39gb
Used: 3.96gb

Can someone please help me figure this out. I dont know how to close the processes & i dont know how to fix the problem period.

Thank you :)
 
You need more RAM. Easy upgrade.

Low free RAM, causing it to Page Out. When it does "page outs" it starts running extremely slow.
 
I realized after I closed out Firefox, my free went up to 2.67gb. Could it just be something with Firefox?
 
Next time take screenshots of the activity monitor when you're having the problem. Make sure to sort RAM usage as highest to lowest so the highest are at the top.

Screenshot and post those when you have the "beach balling"
 
johnnnw said:
You need more RAM. Easy upgrade.

Low free RAM, causing it to Page Out. When it does "page outs" it starts running extremely slow.
Click to expand...

He does not have low free RAM. Inactive memory is essentially free RAM, and 1GB free on a 4GB system is quite normal. His page-outs are not excessive either. I can have much higher page-outs on my macs without beachballing. If his computer is lagging it's much more likely to be the result of a rogue process using most of the CPU's resources.

To the OP: next time your computer is lagging, open Activity Monitor, change My Processes to All Processes, click on the CPU tab to sort processes by descending order with those using the most CPU at the top, and see if anything is using an excessive amount of the processor. That will be the rogue process.
 
mac82 said:
He does not have low free RAM. Inactive memory is essentially free RAM, and 1GB free on a 4GB system is quite normal. His page-outs are not excessive either. I can have much higher page-outs on my macs without beachballing. If his computer is lagging it's much more likely to be the result of a rogue process using most of the CPU's resources.

To the OP: next time your computer is lagging, open Activity Monitor, change My Processes to All Processes, click on the CPU tab to sort processes by descending order with those using the most CPU at the top, and see if anything is using an excessive amount of the processor. That will be the rogue process.
Click to expand...

Might not be a he, btw.
 
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