Memory Problem

[Saluda Teacha]

New to Mac. Bought a new iMac a month and a half ago. Since that time I've had problems with the memory. I've read thread online about people having similar problems with pageouts being high. Currently, my computer has been on less than 24 hrs and I have 45.97 GB of page outs. The only apps that have been run are Safari, World of Warcraft, and Activity Monitor. Some days I'll run only Safari and I will start running with pageouts after 6 or so hours. Switching between apps becomes amazingly slow if I run anything more than 2 Safari pages. WOW takes about 15x longer to load. This can't be normal. If I restart the computer the Memory resets and I am fine for a few hours, but I don't want to reset my computer every 3 hrs when I decide to run iMovie or iPhoto because my memory fills up too fast.

When i've read about other people having this problem they often need to upgrade beyond their 256 or 512MB of RAM but I have 4Gigs of RAM so I don't understand why I'm having problems. Apple Service has been a waste.

To Summarize: Memory fills up and I run huge amounts of page outs with limited use. 4GB RAM with Snow Leopard. Thanks for any help.

 

[tofagerl]

Try booting from the install CD that came with the computer and run the hardware test.
(Or the separate hardware test CD if you have that)

 

[Saluda Teacha]

Tried the regular and extended tests. Nothing wrong. Next step?

 

[Saluda Teacha]

Still restarting after hours of use. Had to restart this afternoon after running since morning. 37+ GB of Pageouts. This is my first mac, so i'm not sure what's normal, i just know that i am having to restart my mac because it is running so slow after running for a while.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

Any screenshots? Cmd + shift + 4. Add a spacebar into that shortcut to take entire window screenshots.

 

[Saluda Teacha]

Heres the Screen shot.

This morning I turned the computer on. I opened up Safari to ESPN.com. Went to work and when I came home this was where we were. over 30GB of pageouts and running slow.

 

[robbieduncan]

Change the filter from "My Processes" to "All Processes"

 

[Saluda Teacha]

Here you go.

 

[robbieduncan]

So mds which is part of Spotlight is taking up all your RAM. I would suggest something is writing/changing lots of files on your drive almost all the time...

 

[DolsJ]

In a few other posts I've seen around the web of users having this similar problem the culprit turned out to be corrupted files that were causing the spotlight index to get "stuck". Basically the index would just keep examining the file over and over again slowly building up RAM and CPU usage. Did you migrate files over from another computer when you setup your iMac?

You may want to start fresh with a clean installation to see if that fixes the issue and then slowly add your files in groups to see if any of them trigger the problem again.

 

[Saluda Teacha]

I did install some files from an external in my switch from PC. I hate to be so novice, but I am only lightly understanding your explanation. Since I do not have the external currently connected, the file would have to be on my mac already.

If it is on my Mac already, i'll have to do the clean installation. By that i'm guess you mean back everything new that i've created on my Mac in the last 1.5 months and reinstall the OS?

Has there been any common file type that ends up being the corrupted file? 98% of the files I originally transferred were pictures, music, & video.

Thanks for the help everyone, its encouraging getting one step further each time.