Hi guys, I read around on this forum a lt, but I doubt my problem has come before, it feels like something's different about this problem, I actually fix Macs myself, and having a problem on my main system that I can't solve baffles me, anywho, I lost PowerMac G4, what was my main mac at the time, was working fine. I moved the HD (on firewire disk) onto this other mac, an eMac, and it ran okay, then it started to get buggy, so I repaired permissions, checked the disk, everything's okay. So the machine's still kindda slow and buggy, so I archive'd and installed, this is when it gets really wierd. I've used this eMac a lot, as sadly I didn't have that PowerMac for too long, it was given to me, and it seems to have had some hardware short. before the PowerMac I used this machine. anyway, I'm getting the beachball WAY TOO OFTEN for comfort, and the other day, I had my Mac freeze up solid for the first time, and I've had this mac for about three years. Wouldn't move an inch. I cold booted the machine, and this is when I went t archive and install, because prior to the freeze it had been starting up very slowly, and beachballing just switching apps. Afterward, I restarted, and updated immediately to 10.4.8 and on restart I got to the Darwin boot screen for about thirty seconds, and the machine restared itself, loaded OS X as normal. IT was still starting very slowly, mostly at the Darwin bootup screen (the grey screen with the spinning gear and the apple logo above) Okay, here is the weirdest of it. I am no longer able to minimize Finder windows. the minimize button is greyed, it occasionally appears, but clicking it does nothing. Occasionally the menu items are doubled when the machine is under high strain. occasionaly when I go to minimize something, the window will fly to the background minimize, appear in the foreground and minimize again. The dashboard is so slow it's hard to use, My FrontRow hack which has never caused problems on this machine, I've done that with other machines for people, no prob radiated from that, I checked the files I patched, they were fine. it was still having all these problems after I took FrontRow and got rid of the modifications on the files that were patched. Also occasionally I can have a window sort of stuck to the front, I can click another window and that other window will be functional, but it will be stuck in the foreground. Firefox beachballs alarmingly often.
Now for the scary part.
According to the activity monitor, I am using almost all of my 512 MB/RAM, and my swap is an average of 4.52 GB. I am only running about six apps right now, most idling except iTunes, and Firefox, which I am writing in right now. very low load, my swap is 3.96 GB. Right now the Kernel process for Darwin is taking over 700 MB of virtual memory. I think this is responsible for the slowdown. If anyone wants me to post pictures of the Activity monitor window, just say, but here is my "top" readout:
Processes: 53 total, 2 running, 51 sleeping... 188 threads 09:01:01
Load Avg: 1.98, 1.11, 0.83 CPU usage: 19.6% user, 17.0% sys, 63.4% idle
SharedLibs: num = 177, resident = 44.2M code, 4.78M data, 8.52M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 7297, resident = 157M + 7.97M private, 109M shared
PhysMem: 67.1M wired, 212M active, 225M inactive, 505M used, 6.30M free
VM: 3.97G + 127M 94305(0) pageins, 50051(0) pageouts
I am highly confused at why suddenly OS X is handling VM so badly, AND WY IT NEEDS 3 GB OF MEMORY! I can't afford anymore memory, as you all know how expensive it is right now... Any idea why my OS is falling apart?
Now for the scary part.
According to the activity monitor, I am using almost all of my 512 MB/RAM, and my swap is an average of 4.52 GB. I am only running about six apps right now, most idling except iTunes, and Firefox, which I am writing in right now. very low load, my swap is 3.96 GB. Right now the Kernel process for Darwin is taking over 700 MB of virtual memory. I think this is responsible for the slowdown. If anyone wants me to post pictures of the Activity monitor window, just say, but here is my "top" readout:
Processes: 53 total, 2 running, 51 sleeping... 188 threads 09:01:01
Load Avg: 1.98, 1.11, 0.83 CPU usage: 19.6% user, 17.0% sys, 63.4% idle
SharedLibs: num = 177, resident = 44.2M code, 4.78M data, 8.52M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 7297, resident = 157M + 7.97M private, 109M shared
PhysMem: 67.1M wired, 212M active, 225M inactive, 505M used, 6.30M free
VM: 3.97G + 127M 94305(0) pageins, 50051(0) pageouts
I am highly confused at why suddenly OS X is handling VM so badly, AND WY IT NEEDS 3 GB OF MEMORY! I can't afford anymore memory, as you all know how expensive it is right now... Any idea why my OS is falling apart?