Startup Disk issue in new Mac Air. Replaced with another new mac, then again. MS Exce

[spawnfreak]

Hey guys, I bought a macbook Air 11’ 4GB 128GB (Mid-2011(after selling my 13” macbook pro) and the problems seem to be never ending.

My primary work involves using MS Excel so I installed a licensed version of Office for Mac 2011 and started using excel on my new mac machine. Within few minutes I got a message pop-up on screen “YOUR MAC OS STARTUP DISK HAS NO MORE SPACE AVAILABLE FOR APPLICATION MEMORY”.

I checked the size of storage and there was just 5 GBs worth space left despite the fact that there was not a single photo, music, video on the new mac apart from a few MBs of excel files. I took it to the vendor (APPLE PREMIUM RESELLER) who after re-installing lion returned it to me and the same issue again popped up. Finally, they diagnosed an SSD problem and after a week of waiting, I was given a brand new shiny macbook air MC969 (same model).

I used the new one and again while using excel, the same issue has come up. I’m really fed up of this stupid error bcoz I was using the same OFFICE FOR MAC suite on my macbook pro and never suffered any such problem. I have also twice thrice completed all the steps I was told to do (like repair disk perm. Emptying the cache etc. )

Since India doesn’t have any Apple owned stores but only Premium Resellers whose replacement etc policies are not governed by Apple.

They do not even refund the money but have given an option of diagnosing the machine and replacing the problematic part.

I googled the web and found no such issued with EXCEL. Strangely, other apps in the office suite seem to work well without any issues.

I have attached the screenshots that how while using excel, within a couple of minutes, mac starts to heat up, then storage decreases and finally the error where mac becomes dead slow.

Please help me to determine where the cause lies.

and FINALLY THE INFAMOUS ERROR

 

[dyn]

Sounds more or less like a software problem with Excel. Excel can cause some problem that will be logged. If this problem is caused 100 times per second than this causes it to log it as fast as that too. This will rapidly fill the log which will grow till you have no more disk space left. You can easily check if this is the case by opening Console (it is an app in /Applications/Utilities) and see what happens when you start Excel and let it run for a while. Additionally you can search for the error message (if there is any) to see if there is a solution.

 

[spawnfreak]

Sounds more or less like a software problem with Excel. Excel can cause some problem that will be logged. If this problem is caused 100 times per second than this causes it to log it as fast as that too. This will rapidly fill the log which will grow till you have no more disk space left. You can easily check if this is the case by opening Console (it is an app in /Applications/Utilities) and see what happens when you start Excel and let it run for a while. Additionally you can search for the error message (if there is any) to see if there is a solution.

Thanx for the reply dyn

actually, It seems its a hardware problem.
Today, I wasn't running any MS Excel. Only Firefox and Chrome and the same issue popped up. I'm attaching the Console Log. Please take some time to check it. Thanx.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/44289207/All%20Messages.txt

 

[dyn]

That link doesn't seem to be working. All I get is a 404. Maybe something with the space in the middle. If you can fix that I'll have a look.

 

[JonLa]

What on earth is the yellow "other" that is consuming your SSD space? I'd run one of those apps (Disc Inventory X?) that can evaluate where your storage space has gone - it sounds like something is filling it up and it can't use it for temporary memory space...

 

[dyn]

What would you think "other" means if you get an x amount of categories? Exactly: anything that doesn't match the other categories! Just plain basic English

 

[JonLa]

Ah! Some people have reported endless rogue time machine bacukups that fill up their SSD without their knowledge and I thought you might be suffering from that. But if you know what's there, I guess not!

 

[dyn]

Well, those local TM backups can not be put in the other categories thus show up part of "Other". In this case it is very unlikely since the drive is filling up too fast for that. You can disable it on the commandline (Terminal) with the command "sudo tmutil disablelocal" (without the quotes). It needs to be run as an admin thus the sudo part. Do this with an admin account and use its password when asked.

 

[spawnfreak]

That link doesn't seem to be working. All I get is a 404. Maybe something with the space in the middle. If you can fix that I'll have a look.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jvlx2js3ud4fl4b/console.txt

here is a new link..

@JonLa, i've never used time machine backups and its disabled since day 1

P.S - this error is not only coming in with excel, it comes with just any app like Firefox or Skype

 

[JonLa]

If you google some of the terms from your report you can find people with similar problems, eg: ps_allocate_cluster - send HI_WAT_ALERT
leades me to, among others:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3737538?start=0&tstart=0

But something is causing a memory leak - have you ran the MS Office 2011 updater to make sure that it's not something that is already fixed?

Are you running filevault or any parental controlled accounts? (just to pick two things highlighted in that apple link

 

[dyn]

There are also lots of messages about SMC:

25/07/12 7:10:40.000 AM kernel SMC::smcReadKeyAction ERROR PH1Z kSMCBadArgumentError(0x89) fKeyHashTable=0x0xffffff800b636000

When you Google it there is not much to be found. I've seen 3 or 4 others mentioning it in a topic at InsanelyMac about the release of 10.7.4. They have this error come up in the logs since they installed 10.7.4.

I also saw another error regarding the Dock:

com.apple.dock.extra Could not connect the action buttonPressed: to target of class NSApplication

I found one very interesting discussion over at discussions.apple.com which seems to be pointing at Filevault. Ha! we might have something here since the error JonLa found also points at Filevault. Anyway, here's the topic I found: Why does Lion immediately reboot with FileVault Enabled?. The last reply in that topic is quite interesting, it points to a problem with Parallels 7 and Filevault although it is old (almost a year ago): Parallels Desktop 7 Update Fixes File Fault & Full Disk Encryption Problems – Get It Now!.

If you've got 10.7.4 it might be a good idea to download the combo updater and run that one to see if this resolves at least some of the problems. If possible update other software so they run the newest version (for the release you are using). Also, see what disabling Filevault does (if you are using it).