Memory Issues

[GoCubsGo]

Every few days I notice that my PowerBook is having problems running. Basically, the little bouncy effect that you get when you hover your mouse pointer over your dock stops working. Other issues include when I click, it's not exactly unclicking. None of this makes sense I'm sure, but it's the best way that I can explain it.

It's almost like I am out of memory. Usually I have eyetv 200 running. I may not be watching anything so only the controler is showing or it could be recording. I always have 1-6 windows open in safari (one window 6 tabs) and sometimes my mail program is open. Other times I could have all that, excel, word, ichat, and text pad open.

A restart fixes this, but now I'm just wondering. I don't want my machine to start feeling like my old windows machine.

I run:
PowerBook Rev C (I think--I'm not entirely sure)
1 gig ram
Tiger 10.4.5

The ram is two 512 sticks. I installed the 2nd 512 stick about 9 months ago.
No other modifications have been made.

 

[mad jew]

Maybe check Activity Monitor to see whether it's a particular process taking up a large amount of resources (I'm guessing it'll be RAM that's significant). Make sure you check All Processes and not just My Processes.

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

A) Check system profiler to be certain that all your ram is still being recognized by the OS. There have been many recent reports of some PB's having the lower ram slot fail suddenly, and thus only the ram in the top slot shows up, necessitating a logic board replacement......

B) 1GB ram is rapidly becoming the bare minimum nowadays for OS X & it's apps.......sad but true

C) What's your cpu speed & video card specs?

1. Safari & iChat are ram HOGS, and EyeTV is very cpu-intensive. Safari has known memory leak issues too, so thats not helping matters either.......

2. Since you mentioned recording from EyeTv, also check to see how much empty space is left on your HDD.....if it is <<15% of the HDD's formatted size, then you could be seeing the effects of your system running out of swap space for the Virtual memory system......this causes major slowdowns!

3. The funny behaviours could be from excess/old cache files that need to be cleaned out/refreshed/rotated. I suggest using one of the free/shareware utilities like Cocktail, Onyx or MacJanitor for this.....

4. If a restart fixes most of the problems, it could be any or all of the above.

ps.........I run most of the same apps you do, plus Photoshop, Camino, and Illustrator. On a DP/450 Sawtooth with 2GB ram, 2 seperate scratch disks, and a Radeon 8500: notta problemo

 

[GoCubsGo]

I am going to try out a few of the suggesitons. Cocktail isn't free, but it's probably worth it. I just ran MacJanitor, but then I read the read me files and it said that it was intended for macs that get shut down each night or on weekends where the system processes aren't allowed to run. It basically runs the processes sudo sh /etc/daily and sudo sh /etc/weekly and so on.
Thank you for your help. I know my next step is to sell my 512 stick and get a gig stick and then sell off the other 512 stick and grab another gig stick. I intend on this being my main machine for at least another 10 months so I want to make sure it's running smooth.

 

[mad jew]

I just ran MacJanitor, but then I read the read me files and it said that it was intended for macs that get shut down each night or on weekends where the system processes aren't allowed to run. It basically runs the processes sudo sh /etc/daily and sudo sh /etc/weekly and so on.

If you merely sleep your Mac and have Tiger, these processes will be run automatically either at the correct time or when the machine next awakens.

Irrespective, I don't think these processes will fix your problem.