I have a Mac and I'm worried

[Ron_Tomkins]

I have had a couple times when due to loading several things at the same time, or maybe doing it too fast, has caused the computer to freeze. The mouse cursor turns into the multicolored spinning ball and basically nothing happens. I am then forced to shut down the computer manually.

What would be the equivalent to the Ctrl Alt Delete option on PC for this situation?

Also, what would be a good Anti-Spyware program recommended for making sure there hasn't been any malicious malware downloaded into the computer?

[Darat]

Ron - you've been conned! Your computer can't be a Mac because they are perfect and they never ever crash or hang or do anything bad!

Actually I'd like to know the answer to this as well I usually just use the power-off button or when that doesn't work switch it off at the wall.

[Ixion]

On a Mac, hit Apple-Option-Esc to bring up the Force Quit menu. Then begin quitting applications until the system restores. This has happened to me before and generally it is one offending program, usually published by a third party.

[Darat]

Thanks - and I didn't know iTunes and iPhoto and the rest of iLife were 3rd Party - does Apple licence the "i" name.... :halo:

[Ixion]

Oh, and as a response to anti-spyware for a Mac, generally Macs are not susceptible to malicious programs because programmers do not target them (smaller user base and all). That doesn't mean that spyware doesn't exist that targets Mac, just that it is very very rare. If you are interested in getting some programs though, SecureMac (http://www.securemac.com/) has been writing security programs for Macs since 1999.

[Ixion]

Thanks - and I didn't know iTunes and iPhoto and the rest of iLife were 3rd Party - does Apple licence the "i" name.... :halo:

AFAIK the "i" is licensed by Apple Inc. and the components of iLife are published by Apple, making them first party. The programs that generally muck me up are Adobe products and Microsoft Office products.

[Darat]

Ixion - I am pulling your leg a little bit, I know the iLife suite is a 1st party Apple product. But I do have to say they are the ones that crash the most on my Mac.

[Ixion]

Ixion - I am pulling your leg a little bit, I know the iLife suite is a 1st party Apple product. But I do have to say they are the ones that crash the most on my Mac.

I kinda figured. :D Sometimes iTunes slows my system down. I suspect there might be a memory leak, but I haven't looked into it. :p

[Hellbound]

Darat:

If the first-party products are crashing your Mac, I'd start looking at your extensions and control panels (or do they still use that on OS X, is it drivers now like everyone else?).

I'd suspect some issue in your display or audio drivers, or some other hardware device that's called on by the applications. While I don't believe Macs never crash (I worked on too many of them to believe that), the first-party apps are usually very stable.

I'm not real familiar with OS X, that was just coming into market when I quit working with Macs, so sorry if none of this is detailed info. In general, though, I'd look for updates to any hardware drivers, and also at any programs that are intrusive (such as anti-virus that scans on-access or similar utilities).

[elgarak]

Being a Mac user myself, I second everything Hellbound has said.

A lot of instability on my system was caused by the Logitech mouse "driver". I kicked it out, and use the standard Mac OS X mouse settings. Otherwise, 1st party Apple software runs very stable. The most common culprit for me right now is Microsoft Office (Office 2008 crashed the Dock, Spaces and Expose a week ago, fer cryin' out loud).

Ron_Tomkins, please check every 3rd party software running (with the activity monitor).

Another common possibility are hardware problems. Most common RAM problems. Have you upgraded your RAM yourself? Sometimes reseating the RAM modules makes such problems go away.

PS. It would be helpful if you provided some more info. Such as your Mac model, OS X version, RAM, harddrive size and how full your HD is, and which programs cause the problems.

[fullflavormenthol]

Also one of the issues many people neglect on the Mac is verifying disk permissions. Usually when I am having problems it is usually a matter of doing this. As for Adobe and other high graphics programs, when doing complex work or using big files it is not uncommon to get the spinning ball; usually I just let it run for a minute or so and it works itself out. The positive side is that OSX doesn't take it upon itself to close out programs.

[Ron_Tomkins]

Oh, and as a response to anti-spyware for a Mac, generally Macs are not susceptible to malicious programs because programmers do not target them (smaller user base and all). That doesn't mean that spyware doesn't exist that targets Mac, just that it is very very rare. If you are interested in getting some programs though, SecureMac (http://www.securemac.com/) has been writing security programs for Macs since 1999.

Thank you. I will try that one.

Ron_Tomkins, please check every 3rd party software running (with the activity monitor).

Will do from now on.

Another common possibility are hardware problems. Most common RAM problems. Have you upgraded your RAM yourself? Sometimes reseating the RAM modules makes such problems go away.

Not at all. This computer is brandly new. I haven't even considered such "RAM upgrade" activity.

PS. It would be helpful if you provided some more info. Such as your Mac model, OS X version, RAM, harddrive size and how full your HD is, and which programs cause the problems.

I can't quite tell which programs are causing the problems because for one thing this doesn't happen often. But I just wanted to know of a better way to close programs, rather than shutting the computer off.

[Ron_Tomkins]

Ron - you've been conned! Your computer can't be a Mac because they are perfect and they never ever crash or hang or do anything bad!

Actually I'd like to know the answer to this as well I usually just use the power-off button or when that doesn't work switch it off at the wall.

Conned? Is that some sort of curse inflicted by the Coneheads?

(Insert Coneheads pic here)

[grunion]

The last pushed OS upgrade (10.5.3) indeed caused a bunch of incompatibility errors with iLife applications. Things that worked just fine one day stopped working the next. This is not a good summer for Mac users who rely on iPhoto and iMovie!

[elgarak]

Thank you. I will try that one.



Will do from now on.



Not at all. This computer is brandly new. I haven't even considered such "RAM upgrade" activity.



I can't quite tell which programs are causing the problems because for one thing this doesn't happen often. But I just wanted to know of a better way to close programs, rather than shutting the computer off.

There's also a nice Dashboard widget called iStat Pro that tells you all kinds of useful little things, like the most active processes (good to find offending programs), network i/o, HD usage etc.

To shut down programs: As mentioned, Apple-Option-Esc should work always. If not, there's not much you can do beside shutting off. You can also try to switch to other programs, since mostly it's just the foreground process not responding when you get a spinning beach ball. You can switch with Apple-Tab, or clicking outside of foreground windows. Then you can reach "Force Quit" in the Apple-symbol menu.

Re. Offending programs: You mentioned trying to start up multiple programs at once (or short after one another) that causes problems. I just wanted to know which programs you most commonly use like this. For instance, I automatically start iChat when I boot up the MacBook, and starting iChat like this takes some time that appears to freeze the whole system. Fortunately I seldom have to reboot -- the last time was over a week ago.

Re. RAM: Mac OS X is pretty good at handling memory requirements. However, I'll try to keep my system clean by stopping programs I don't use, even though I have my MacBook maxed out with RAM. I occasionally forget to do it, so I check the Dock for glowing balls that indicate running programs (with no open windows anymore... I always forget to close video players). Also, keeping a lot of files in the Trash uses up a lot of RAM -- Activity Monitor can tell you if have a lot of inactive data in RAM.

[BenBurch]

If you run too many things, and don't have enough real RAM installed, you can indeed freeze it up. If your machine has room for more RAM, buy it. Its cheap and everything will work better.

[Ron_Tomkins]

I'll try to make a note of which programs I had running next time it happens, but I can tell Safari, Msn Messenger and Skype are usually some of the programs that are running.

[elgarak]

I'll try to make a note of which programs I had running next time it happens, but I can tell Safari, Msn Messenger and Skype are usually some of the programs that are running.I run Safari and Skype continuously -- without much trouble. The times that Safari crashed are rare -- maybe twice the last six months? Once was me being on a baaad webpage.

So, plus the given track record of Microsoft of having the most crashes on my system, I strongly suspect MSN Messenger the most likely culprit. There's the freeware option of Adium that can connect to MSN chat.

As always, make sure to use the latest versions.

[Ron_Tomkins]

Ok it just happened a couple times. I have been running nothing but Safari, loading some websites and a couple times the computer froze for a little while and displayed the infamous multicolored spinning wheel on the cursor. So apparently I don't even need to be operating different programs at the same time.

[RayG]

Stay off the porn!!! :D

RayG

[Ron_Tomkins]

Stay off the porn!!! :D

RayG

I saw that coming.:)

[fullflavormenthol]

Ok it just happened a couple times. I have been running nothing but Safari, loading some websites and a couple times the computer froze for a little while and displayed the infamous multicolored spinning wheel on the cursor. So apparently I don't even need to be operating different programs at the same time.
Disk Permissions. I have had the same problem with Safari in the past. What you need to do is reset, empty cache, and then go into Disk Utilities and verify and repair disk permissions. Chances are something as moved out of place, and caused the system to go wonky, and this would also effect the iLife apps as well. You should do a verify every so often if you are doing heavy work on the Mac.

[Kevin_Lowe]

I'm a mac user but to be honest, I've often found Safari to be a bit flaky. I use it as my main browser anyway because it's fast and I like the interface, but I always keep Firefox on my toolbar for the very occasional site that makes Safari choke and die.

No, I'm not talking about porn sites. Yes, I always install all software updates.

[Little 10 Toes]

I saw that coming.:)

How about this one.....

Get a PC. ;)

[BenBurch]

How about this one.....

Get a PC. ;)

Macs ARE PCs.

I'm in Firefox on XP right now on my Mac. I also have Linux running and MacOS too...

Virtual machines rock.

[fullflavormenthol]

Macs ARE PCs.

I'm in Firefox on XP right now on my Mac. I also have Linux running and MacOS too...

Virtual machines rock.
I have both a Mac and a PC, and I end up running virtual machines on both. 3ds Max is about the only thing keeping me from going Mac only. Parallels and the like are great things...beats running Virtual PC.

[Ron_Tomkins]

How about this one.....

Get a PC. ;)

That one I didn't see coming.

But my PC just died. That's why I just got a Mac. So.. uh... no.

[Ron_Tomkins]

Disk Permissions. I have had the same problem with Safari in the past. What you need to do is reset, empty cache, and then go into Disk Utilities and verify and repair disk permissions. Chances are something as moved out of place, and caused the system to go wonky, and this would also effect the iLife apps as well. You should do a verify every so often if you are doing heavy work on the Mac.

Where exactly is "disk utilities"?

[Dan O.]

Macintosh HD->Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility


ETA: Computers should be able to find these things for you without mucking around in nested folders. So, for the easy way, type command-space (one finger hits both keys) then type disk in the Spotlight search box. If you are running OS X 10.5.4 it will highlight the Disk Utility application and when you press return, Disk Utility will launch.

[Ron_Tomkins]

Thanks.

[Dan O.]

I have had a couple times when due to loading several things at the same time, or maybe doing it too fast, has caused the computer to freeze. The mouse cursor turns into the multicolored spinning ball and basically nothing happens. I am then forced to shut down the computer manually.

That really sounds like you don't have enough RAM so the system is paging to disk. Since disk is several orders of magnitude slower than RAM the system will appear to grind to a halt (but that beach ball is spinning which is a clue that the whole system isn't frozen).

Activity Monitor is a good utility for seeing what's running and what resources your Mac is currently using. The only caution new users need to watch out for is when you are looking at the details of a process, the "Quit" button at the bottom of the window quits that process which is probably not what you really want to do.

[SezMe]

I'm thinking of reporting this thread because Tomkins hasn't said "You people" yet.

[Ron_Tomkins]

I'm thinking of reporting this thread because Tomkins hasn't said "You people" yet.

... yet.

[BenBurch]

That really sounds like you don't have enough RAM so the system is paging to disk. Since disk is several orders of magnitude slower than RAM the system will appear to grind to a halt (but that beach ball is spinning which is a clue that the whole system isn't frozen). ...

My analysis too. I recommend at least 3 GB these days. (Which is maxed out for an iMac.)

[Darat]

Any clever clogs help with another Mac - problem? I have a network storage drive "Zen" and the Mac has (sort-of) been accessing it fine(ish) for sometime. However it's stopped working, ther server shows up as a server in Finder, but when I double click to access it Finder locks up (with the nice busy cursor). I've left the Mac for over 2 hours to see if it was just taking a very long time to access it. The server is working fine (I can access its control panel on my mac via its IP address in the browser). I've checked permissions for both as a guest connection and even tried a passworded user (all of which work fine on the Windows PC I'm running).

Any ideas?

[erlando]

Macintosh HD->Applications->Utilities->Disk Utility


ETA: Computers should be able to find these things for you without mucking around in nested folders. So, for the easy way, type command-space (one finger hits both keys) then type disk in the Spotlight search box. If you are running OS X 10.5.4 it will highlight the Disk Utility application and when you press return, Disk Utility will launch.

And if you want even more searchability (is that a word) there's QuickSilver: http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/what_is_quicksilver

QuickSilver is more than a launcher but even just as a launcher it's imho better than spotlight. If not for anything else I like the interface better.

[DoctorOHM]

The mouse cursor turns into the multicolored spinning ball and basically nothing happens.mended for making sure there hasn't been any malicious malware downloaded into the computer?


Aka "the marble of doom" (marbleofdoom.com)

[Dan O.]

Any clever clogs help with another Mac - problem? I have a network storage drive "Zen" and the Mac has (sort-of) been accessing it fine(ish) for sometime. However it's stopped working, ther server shows up as a server in Finder, but when I double click to access it Finder locks up (with the nice busy cursor). I've left the Mac for over 2 hours to see if it was just taking a very long time to access it. The server is working fine (I can access its control panel on my mac via its IP address in the browser). I've checked permissions for both as a guest connection and even tried a passworded user (all of which work fine on the Windows PC I'm running).

Any ideas?

Have you tried rebooting your Mac? Since you are also a PC user it's probably one of the first things you tried but I found it is something that many Mac only user will overlook.

Can you recall what changed when it stopped working? Was there a system update between the time when it was working and when it stopped?

Is there anything in the Console logs that hint at the cause of the problem?


I'm thinking the problem is on one of three places: Some configuration is wrong on your Mac, there is a firewall like block between your Mac and the network disk or some finder resource on the disk is corrupted. Finding the fix is a process of divide and conquer. Either try accessing the disk with a second Mac or build a clean system on a locally attached external drive to rule out local configuration problems. Attach directly to the problem disk to avoid network filters. And try accessing the drive from Terminal to bypass the Finder.

[Deus Ex Machina]

I have had a couple times when due to loading several things at the same time, or maybe doing it too fast, has caused the computer to freeze. The mouse cursor turns into the multicolored spinning ball and basically nothing happens. I am then forced to shut down the computer manually.

What would be the equivalent to the Ctrl Alt Delete option on PC for this situation?

Also, what would be a good Anti-Spyware program recommended for making sure there hasn't been any malicious malware downloaded into the computer?

It is not doing things too fast - your speed of clicking does not come anywhere need the bus or processor speeds in the machine.

You don't say what sort of machine, what OS so this is going to be pretty generic

a) Go to Applications>Utilities and launch Disk Utility
b) Select your HD
c) Click "repair disk permissions"

let it run. If you have never done this before it may take a while.

Then try your apps again.

Antispyware would be a waste. We have 400 mac users in our user base and in 5 years we have never had one instance of it.

[Dan O.]

If you are in the Boulder area, we have a small group of Mac enthusiasts that have been meeting monthly since before the Mac was released. The Next meeting is Thursday night (normally the second Thursday but we were bumped this month due to a scheduling conflict). For details, see the web site: http://www.comug.com/

[Ron_Tomkins]

Okay I am now officially worried and on the verge of panic.

Today I turned my computer on and for the first time since I bought it (which is less than two months ago) it took a very long time to load the desktop. I actually began wondering if it would load it at all.

I am now convinced that some sort of malware has gotten to my machine.


If anyone here knows of a very good program or security-check procedure for this kind of events, please let me know.

Meanwhile, I'm gonna give that Securemac a try.

[richardm]

Scrap it and get a Mac!

What? Oh.

Is it possible that this is some sort of disk failure developing? If it's only a couple of months old it might be worth checking this out and getting it fixed under warranty. If you took it to an Apple shop could they give it a once-over?

[kookbreaker]

I had a very similar problem, and it turned out my hard drive was failing. Get all you can off of it and get it to the shop.

[richardm]

I had a very similar problem, and it turned out my hard drive was failing. Get all you can off of it and get it to the shop.

Great! My career as a Prophet of Doom is off to a terrific start :D

(Sorry, Ron!)

[Ron_Tomkins]

I just finished the scan with Macscan. All it found was 5 cookies. 4 of them from google. 1 from CNN (And I rarely visit the CNN website. Go figure!)

[elgarak]

Okay I am now officially worried and on the verge of panic.

Today I turned my computer on and for the first time since I bought it (which is less than two months ago) it took a very long time to load the desktop. I actually began wondering if it would load it at all.

I am now convinced that some sort of malware has gotten to my machine.


If anyone here knows of a very good program or security-check procedure for this kind of events, please let me know.

Meanwhile, I'm gonna give that Securemac a try.
Don't Panic!

That's may not mean anything at all. Sometimes this just happens. Mostly when you did major changes to the system (updates, (un-)installing lots of programs etc.), or did a "hard reset" or similar (turning it off without the proper shutdown procedure).

Run the Disk Utitlity, select your HD, run "Verify Disk" and see if there's some problem. (Assuming you have a backup, Time Machine or otherwise.)

To be on the safe side, you can do it after booting from an external HD (if you have made a bootable copy on it) or the Mac OS X Install or Repair disk. Press Alt after starting to select alternative boot drive.

Lastly, why turn it off anyway? My MacBook is either on or in sleep mode. I seldom restart, mostly after an update, or when I feel there's something awry. In my experience, Mac OS X does not corrupt itself while running.

Malware infection is very, very improbable.

[TheDaver]

http://www.comug.com/
Fails validation. 20 errors.

[Ron_Tomkins]

Don't Panic!

That's may not mean anything at all. Sometimes this just happens. Mostly when you did major changes to the system (updates, (un-)installing lots of programs etc.), or did a "hard reset" or similar (turning it off without the proper shutdown procedure).

Run the Disk Utitlity, select your HD, run "Verify Disk" and see if there's some problem. (Assuming you have a backup, Time Machine or otherwise.)

To be on the safe side, you can do it after booting from an external HD (if you have made a bootable copy on it) or the Mac OS X Install or Repair disk. Press Alt after starting to select alternative boot drive.

Lastly, why turn it off anyway? My MacBook is either on or in sleep mode. I seldom restart, mostly after an update, or when I feel there's something awry. In my experience, Mac OS X does not corrupt itself while running.

Malware infection is very, very improbable.

I ran the Disk Utility and it didn't find anything wrong after the search (is it normal that all the time it was doing the verification, the cursor turned into the marble of doom?). However, I should point out that I haven't made any backups nor time machine.... flux capacitor... restore thingies.

[Dan O.]

I ran the Disk Utility and it didn't find anything wrong after the search (is it normal that all the time it was doing the verification, the cursor turned into the marble of doom?). However, I should point out that I haven't made any backups nor time machine.... flux capacitor... restore thingies.

Yes, the disk is essentially taken off line for Disk Utility to verify that everything is kosher. If the filesystem were modified during the scan it might report false errors.

Disk Utility will also show you the S.M.A.R.T. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring,_Analysis,_and_Reporting_Technology) status if your drive supports it. This is a self diagnostic that can supposedly tell you when your drive is about to fail. Actual failures however don't often give you enough warning to do anything about it. Google did a study of this not long ago that you could probably look up.

The long delay at startup is caused by the system repairing a corrupted file system. You can expect this if you don't shut down properly. Journaling helps prevent the delay by tracking what is about to be changed so the repairs are much quicker. But there could be a few cases where a full file system check is still required. Open the Console utility to see what your system has really been up to.

[ThatSoundAgain]

Is it not still the case that one of the system DVDs that come with the machine also works as a hardware test? Have a look at your disks. If it says something like 'hold C to run hardware test', you can boot with it in the machine, and it'll run a self-test that would most probably detect bad RAM or a failing hd.

[Dan O.]

I've never seen a memory test that exercises ram as well as a modern OS. Except where the ram has outright failed which is easily detected by the startup diagnostics, the most common problems I've seen are intermittent failures due to refresh and timing issues. Both of these can pass exhaustive standalone memory diagnostics but will fail in a running system.

Running diagnostics on a failing HD is an excellent way to lose data.

[ThatSoundAgain]

I bow to your superior experience, Dan. (ETA: expertise, even)

I think, though, that this option - booting the hardware test disk - is likely near the top of the check-off list they use at Apple's call-in support.

[Dan O.]

http://www.comug.com/
Fails validation. 20 errors.

There are probably more errors on our live broadcast of the meeting. 7-10 PM MDT.

[jwwalker]

On a Mac, hit Apple-Option-Esc to bring up the Force Quit menu. Then begin quitting applications until the system restores.

Usually the list of programs to force quit will identify one as "not responding", and that's the one you should kill first.

By the way, "not responding" basically means that the program is not paying attention to the keyboard or mouse. Which might mean that it's stuck in a loop, or might mean that it's furiously doing useful work. Well-written programs try to keep responding even when they are working hard, but programmers are human.

[Illustronic]

Rule of thumb, load up as much RAM as you can, but you don't have to exceed 4 gigs as nothing yet can make use of that, *I'm not sure about Photoshop CS3 yet, CS2 could use 4 gigs*. File size and use of RAM are things Adobe upgrades with every new release, in fact their programs require more with all the crap they stuff into them.

iLife requires lots of RAM, especially if you author videos.

Try Opera as a browser and see what you think, I still use Safari with mixed results when animated gifs and movies are used on message boards, a loading delay would occur that Netscape handled differently. I used to stream gifs and QuickTime movies and Netscape was more stable to transfer the files to a server than Safari was.

NOTICE: QuickTime is now a target for virus writers, so that includes iTunes. DO program your Software Update to check twice a week.

I have to admit I browsed this thread and may have missed a bit of information. I've been working almost exclusively on a MAC since 90, and work it's fundamental advantage of video authoring, vector and photographic image creation, as well as rudimentary 3D scene design and rendering.

One other thing about the 'Force Quit', I get Adobe products experiencing this quite a bit, mostly Photoshop. You can prompt the force quit, and see Photoshop not responding, at that point I say to quit, and when it asks me if I'm sure, I cancel force quit and Photoshop more times than not will respond. You do not have to force quit a program that does not say it is not responding. Force quitting is basically a crash, but only for the program effected. Basically give the program the amount of time it would take to save the file opened, after this aborted force quit, and it mostly snaps back to functionality.

I avoid using Microsoft Entourage for our PC based eMail server because I experience loss of keyboard commands in applications, which renders them almost useless. That just could be a problem at work since very few of us use MACs.

[a_unique_person]

I knew Jobs was telling lies. All you idiots out there should be running i5/OS. No viruses there, or iTunes or Microsoft Office.

[DoubtingStephen]

Ron,

The problem you are having is caused by the increasing RAM usage of Safari over time, trust me on this.

Safari starts out fine, but the longer you run it the more of a memory pig it becomes. When Safari starts to beachball it usually indicates that it is pigging out on so much memory that it needs to swap some to disk. When any computer running any operating system has to start swapping memory to disk, performance is the first thing that suffers. To get the best results from Safari I suggest you quit the program and then restart it once every day or two. Increasing the RAM in your computer might let you run Safari longer between beachball events.

You can very easily watch the memory being used with the Activity Monitor app that is located in Applications > Utilities. I always start this program first thing when I boot any of my many Macs. I keep it in my dock.

Do this to demonstrate what I am saying:

1. Start Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor.app
2. If Safari is already running, observe how much memory it is using, if not start it and note that it is not using much memory, perhaps 100mb or less.
3. Visit 5 or 10 websites just as you normally would
4. Observe that now Safari is using more memory
5. Continue using Safari until it begins to beachball, then use Activity Monitor to see how much memory it is pigging out on. You will observe that it will be hundreds of megabytes of RAM.
6. You have now confirmed that the problem you are having = Safari is a RAM pig
7. Exit Safari, if you have multiple tabs or windows open, no worries, just exit
8. Restart Safari, drop-down History and select Reopen All Windows From Last Session
9. All your Safari windows and tabs are restored
10. Use Activity Monitor to see how much RAM Safari is using now, it is much, much less now because you restarted it

I find that on my Mac Pro with 8gb of memory, Safari begins to behave very badly when it gets up above 600mb of memory in use.

I make it my practice to restart Safari pro-actively when it hits about 600mb of physical RAM. I have seen it reach 1.5gb of physical RAM, which is very, very piggy. As I type this it has been running since yesterday and is currently pigging out on 510mb on this machine. It's due for a kick, er, I mean restart.

[Blue Bubble]

I find that on my Mac Pro with 8gb of memory, Safari begins to behave very badly when it gets up above 600mb of memory in use.



Why should occupying a mere 600 Mb on a system with 8 Gb cause such a problem ?

Unless, of course, you're running other stuff that's taking up most of the rest at the same time ... (but you don't say that).

[DoubtingStephen]

Why should occupying a mere 600 Mb on a system with 8 Gb cause such a problem ?

Unless, of course, you're running other stuff that's taking up most of the rest at the same time ... (but you don't say that).

I'm never running enough stuff to use all of the physical RAM, so the reason why Safari begins behaving badly when it is using very much RAM is apparently not because there is insufficient additional RAM available.

I do not know why it acts badly when it is pigging out on RAM, but I do know that it does.

Perhaps it gets so bloated that it begins to have trouble managing all of the RAM it is pigging out on.

[Illustronic]

I think one reason Safari slows with use is it is saving too many cache's and the your CPU has a small cache speed. There are ways to increase the cache speed out there or you can empty the cache by restarting the program. This is independent from RAM. Cache is something like a history that starts over with a new launch.

Photoshop is particularly greedy in stealing RAM for remembering all of the work you are doing in a session. If you really want to tax your system with Photoshop, make a very large pattern and save it for fill use. I found that out the slow way, and later saved the pattern as a file to store for if I would ever need to load it again.

Not sure if that helps anything, software today just stores too much information you rarely make use of. But it's really bizarre what you can find out minute by minute what your computer has been doing all day if you know where to look.

[Ron_Tomkins]

Ron,

The problem you are having is caused by the increasing RAM usage of Safari over time, trust me on this.

Safari starts out fine, but the longer you run it the more of a memory pig it becomes. When Safari starts to beachball it usually indicates that it is pigging out on so much memory that it needs to swap some to disk. When any computer running any operating system has to start swapping memory to disk, performance is the first thing that suffers. To get the best results from Safari I suggest you quit the program and then restart it once every day or two. Increasing the RAM in your computer might let you run Safari longer between beachball events.

You can very easily watch the memory being used with the Activity Monitor app that is located in Applications > Utilities. I always start this program first thing when I boot any of my many Macs. I keep it in my dock.

Do this to demonstrate what I am saying:

1. Start Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor.app
2. If Safari is already running, observe how much memory it is using, if not start it and note that it is not using much memory, perhaps 100mb or less.
3. Visit 5 or 10 websites just as you normally would
4. Observe that now Safari is using more memory
5. Continue using Safari until it begins to beachball, then use Activity Monitor to see how much memory it is pigging out on. You will observe that it will be hundreds of megabytes of RAM.
6. You have now confirmed that the problem you are having = Safari is a RAM pig
7. Exit Safari, if you have multiple tabs or windows open, no worries, just exit
8. Restart Safari, drop-down History and select Reopen All Windows From Last Session
9. All your Safari windows and tabs are restored
10. Use Activity Monitor to see how much RAM Safari is using now, it is much, much less now because you restarted it

I find that on my Mac Pro with 8gb of memory, Safari begins to behave very badly when it gets up above 600mb of memory in use.

I make it my practice to restart Safari pro-actively when it hits about 600mb of physical RAM. I have seen it reach 1.5gb of physical RAM, which is very, very piggy. As I type this it has been running since yesterday and is currently pigging out on 510mb on this machine. It's due for a kick, er, I mean restart.

Thank you, Stephen. I have opened the activity monitor and right now it is showing that Safari is using 40.75 GB out of 145.24. I will keep track of these numbers in case they increase.

I hope that's what it is. And if so, I guess I will just download Firefox or Opera which have the fame of being very competent browsers.

[Blue Bubble]

I'm never running enough stuff to use all of the physical RAM, so the reason why Safari begins behaving badly when it is using very much RAM is apparently not because there is insufficient additional RAM available.

I do not know why it acts badly when it is pigging out on RAM, but I do know that it does.

Safari (and Firefox, though Firefox appears to be a lot better with version 3) are prime examples of sloppy programming. Its behaviour, as you described, is typical of memory_leak, where allocated memory is not released when it's no longer needed. The result is that its virtual_memory increases, and increases, and increases. That it seems to grind to a halt round about 600 Mb (in your case) would also indicate that either Safari itself, or your system in general, is misconfigured to not allow a program's working set to go above this, even when there is ample real memory available. Despite me being a big MacOS fan (Mac user since 1984), I don't know enough about its internals to know how to tweak this. On my day-in/day-out systems (VMS), I have all sorts of parameters I can adjust to tune and optimise all of this.

The "solution", as you suggest, is to re-start the browser when this happens, and is exactly what I also do.


Perhaps it gets so bloated that it begins to have trouble managing all of the RAM it is pigging out on.

Not its RAM, but its virtual memory which is managed not by Safari, but by the operating system. But who cares where it's managed; it's sloppy programming, and we come across sloppy programming on a far too regular basis nowadays.

[Blue Bubble]

Thank you, Stephen. I have opened the activity monitor and right now it is showing that Safari is using 40.75 GB out of 145.24. I will keep track of these numbers in case they increase.

I hope that's what it is. And if so, I guess I will just download Firefox or Opera which have the fame of being very competent browsers.

Ron, I don't think you really mean 40.75 Gbytes - if you do, that's one helluva system you have ;)

As mentioned before, Firefox version 3 appears to be hugely improved in this area.

[DoubtingStephen]

and we come across sloppy programming on a far too regular basis nowadays.

Amen to that! I finally escaped from the worst piece of bad software I had been using for ten years when I replaced Adobe Dreamwrecker with Coda.

I agree that the base problem with Safari is bad programming.

[AndyD]

Ahh,"The Rainbow Wheel O' Death" :)

One thing not mentioned (I think) is that for some reason, Safari has/had an issue with those little icon things (favicons) that it shows next to the web address (like the little Randi pic on this site). My Safari (I'm in OS 10.3.9 though) reached the point where it took forever to do stuff, with lots of "rainbow wheels" - until I found that those things are stored somewhere and can be deleted and prevented from caching in future. Much better now.

Look here (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040323144305318) and her (http://forums.appleinsider.com/archive/index.php/t-40236.html)e for some basic info. Note that the right folder might be under your User directory, not the root directory. I can't remember what I did to stop them coming back - it was something very simple. No software required. Google will give you more.

For other, general, crashes you can always take a look at the Console (Applications/Utilities/Console) and check out the Logs>Crash Logs and see if there's any useful info there. Even if you can't follow the tech stuff yourself, it will sometimes indicate if the same thing is causing the problem and will give you something to copy and paste on a tech forum.

I get those very slow restarts sometimes - and very slow shut downs and things are still running after five years. Sometimes it doesn't even shut down properly and I have to hold the power button to force it to shut down. The Mac I use at work (OS Tiger) sometimes needs to be restarted twice before it restarts properly.

OS X is quite bizarre if you're used to the old Mac OS. After five years it still tests me (so many things are hidden or written in Unix-style - or both).