Im really hoping Skype was it. I have no problem with not using that software lol
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- Thread starter KingOfStuff
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Im really hoping Skype was it. I have no problem with not using that software lol
Really? What other issues have there been with Skype? It's always just worked fine for me, and after having had it running for quite a long time now, I still experience no issues.
Ill keep an eye on things and let you know if Skype wasnt the cause and if something else starts causing it again.
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Again, i am completely shocked that after over a year of trying to figure this out it turned out to be Skype... grrr. So much time put into troubleshooting
I have noticed something else. With iStat menu, it used to always show my video memory being 100% used all the time. Now that i have rebooted and not been running Skype all day the video memory is reporting only using about half.
That's intense if Skype really allocates that much VRAM. But in case it is horrendously written and reserves that much VRAM in all cases, and not just with your setup that may also explain why I am not seeing it, as I have a 4GB GPU.
If I remember correctly yours is 2GB. Could of course also be something specific to your Skype account or something.
I'll try and do further testing
So bad news... it started coming back.... I was downtrodden. Out of possibilities. Nor a solution. I picked it up slowly... and i pulled the trigger... and inserted my Install MacOS Sierra usb. I have only installed 3 apps. Mission critical apps, and 2 Safari extensions. For the next few days i have only enough resources to perform any task that any user in a 'guest' account would be able to do. Now we wait.
Could you have a bad RAM stick? I remember that I had a lot of problems with my iMac 27" from 2011. At first I blamed the new OS version, but nothing really fixed the random issues. Then I started to check the RAM sticks, and found a bad one. I took the chance to upgrade my RAM to double capacity with 4 new RAM sticks, and all my problems were gone. Unfortunately, about 2 years later, the GPU started to fail.
I decided that the iMac is a bad design. I had to give away a perfectly good screen because of an unrelated hardware failure. No more all-in-one computers for me, with the exception of MacBooks, of course. I was lucky to get a Cheese Grater MacPro 5.1 that I upgraded to the max and use it as my private server.
Sorry, it's too long ago that I remember the details. Maybe you find something with Google? I had to make a bootable USB stick to run the test program. At the end I was only sure to have a bad RAM. To find which bank it was, I simply removed 2 of the 4 RAM sticks, then exchanged them. With one pair everything was OK, with the other pair I could reproduce the random glitches. If you happen to have 4 RAM sticks equipped, you could try the same method. If not, why not invest in 2 more RAM sticks? I believe that all the trouble you went through warrants this investment.
There are memtest programs that run in a preboot environment, i.e. you boot into them. For a quicker look, System Information displays the result of the power-on-self test. It's not extensive, but gives a quick overview. It should say "OK" for each RAM stick.
Apple Hardware Diagnostics used to also have a RAM test mode, but the newer ones don't show too many details to the user, so I don't know if that'll work.
The industry standard for memory testing is memtest86
http://www.memtest.org
Here's its wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memtest86#Description
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That could seem like a memory error. I'm not great at parsing these though, so I'm unsure which DIMM it is. Intuitively, DIMM 4 would seem the most logical. Maybe System Information shows it (see earlier post).
Interesting that your guest account didn't show problems though if it's the RAM - Could be that you didn't load enough onto the RAM when you were logged into the guest account though
I am testing the sticks out right now with the Apple Hardware Test. I may try after with memtest. As far as the guest account goes, maybe i wasnt loading enough. Which would make sense because with my personal account i would load up many more apps and other random things that you cant inside of a guest account.
So as i said i started testing the RAM using AHT. When i took the RAM out i took out the 2 bottom sticks. Bottom when you are looking at the monitor from the back with the sticks exposed. With the 2 top sticks in i got no errors with the Extended Test enabled. With that option clicked it takes about 2 hours by the way... then i took the RAM stick that was in bank 3 and placed it back in bank 3 and ran the extended test again. No errors. At this point i figured it would either be the 4th bank or the 4th stick. I put the 4th stick in bank 3. Ran the extended test. No errors. So maybe the bank is bad?? I am currently testing the 4th stick in the 4th bank. 2 more hours till i learn my fate...
Having the bank itself be bad would be very strange.
Perhaps it helped reseating them?
Ok so for all the other tests it was taking about 2 hours, but with the 4th stick back in the 4th bank the test ran for 1 hour and 14 min before it came back with the same error... So the bank itself is having errors it seems
Well in that case, congratulation. You've been the victim of an incredibly rare hardware failure.
Thank you Thank you! I dont know what to say, I didnt prepare a speech... But i would like to send a special recognition to @whg for recommending a memory test. @casperes1996 for treading the trail fraught with peril. Corsair for manufacturing quality memory. And finally Apple Inc., with all their money, in which they are lucky was not in that bank.
So what are you going to do now? Live with only one bank of RAM? Maybe you can get higher capacity RAM sticks to compensate for the loss?
But it's also an uneven balance on the memory controller. One channel has one stick, the other channel has two sticks. That decreases the memory controller's access speed a tad too. Not that it's necessarily even noticeable, but something that'd also bug me a bit
I no longer have RAM in the slot that was giving errors. I now have all my same apps and data back on my iMac. So i suppose we'll see
The thing that stood out to me was "megaapp". What is that? If it's Mega Backup that's known malware and should be removed. It's also known to cause OS corruption that would need to be taken care of.
OP: When you are doing your "fresh installs" are you then reinstalling software? I'd see if a fresh install with NOTHING reinstalled keeps giving you hassle.
It was MegaSync. On fresh installs i was installing software from new downloads. I never tested a fresh install for a long period of time but wouldnt that be the same experience as the Guest account as described previously? The Guest account never gave me any issues but then again as @casperes1996 said i probably wasnt using enough RAM to access the RAM stick in the 4th slot. Using enough RAM would be something i would be constantly doing in my primary account.
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Also remember as i said earlier, my MBP was restored from a Time Machine backup from the iMac and the MBP never has any issues.