Memory Leaks? Help OS PURGE

elderloc

Hello I support a large hospital Macintosh department. Currently the Marketing department which uses Macintosh machines is having problems toward the end of the day with slow downs. I suspect that it is do to memory leaks.



The machine have the following software



Mac OS 9.1 or higher

Mac Office 98

Adobe Photoshop 6.0

Adobe Illustrator 8 or 9

Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 or 5

Adobe type manager

Quark Express 4

Lotus Note 5.07

Virex 6.0



I installed 1 to 1.5 gigs of memory in each of these machines as well.



The problem is as follows the longer the machines are on the slower they get. Toward the end of the day the machine come to almost a crawel. The Machines either crashe or need to be rebooted after which they the are fine for a while.



I talked to another user in our AV department and he is using MAC OSPURGE. I can't find this utility does any one know where it can be downloaded? It's freeware from what I hear. Also does anyone have a fix for this problem or have they had a problem like this, and how did you fix it?



Also is there any other memory defrager out there?





Thanks



Elderloc <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />

ghost_user_name

If it's anywhere you can find it here





<a href="http://www.versiontracker.com"; target="_blank">http://www.versiontracker.com</a>;

dhagan4755

Turn off Sherlock Indexing.

buonrotto

Use something like Funk Monkey to find old temp files that aren't begin deleted either.

randycat99

Have you set generous memory allocations for each of those applications you listed- especially the ones that get heavy useage throughout the day? After a hard day's run and all the appropriate applications still running, have you checked the "About this Computer" window to see how much memory each application has ended up swallowing? Have they exceeded the values you had manually set for each application? Also, are you running Photoshop with its own dedicated VM system, or just using the MacOS VM system? I don't know if it has been fixed in newer versions of Photoshop, but I've heard that older Photoshop versions don't like to run with MacOS VM enabled (preferring to run their own dedicated swap file instead). These are just things off the top of my head. I don't know if they concern your particular problem for sure.

elderloc

Thanks for the input guys/girls...



I'm a mac user but I'm an MCSE by trade. I know a lot about macs but not in a corprate enviroment. My company is still trying to get me the capital for my Dual G4 when they do I can do some R'n'D.



Anyway..



1). Photoshop is running on the MACOS VM.

2). I have not turned off Sherlocks Indexing where is the setting for this?

3). I need to look over the memory settings for the apps. The pervious company did not help them much I'm sure they are jacked up.

4). Is there a major memory rpoblem with OS 9.x? I never saw it on my dual G4 when I had one at home.



I don't see these macs much during the day, as I have to do my PEECEE bs as well. If I can get a user to refrain from rebooting and call me I trust I should look at the largest available memory block?



The major apps they use at same time are IE, Photoshop and Lotus Notes. Maybe word sometimes.





Thanks again.

randycat99

Aaaagh! I wasn't going to mention it because you hadn't listed it, but Internet Explorer can get REALLY fussy when used over long periods of time (a typical work day), opening reams of highly-graphic webpages. It can get really laggy (as if the computer has run out of memory) and sometimes get to the point of causing lags while working with other programs in the foreground (essentially making the whole computer seem like it is grinding to a halt). I don't know if that is your problem, but if you quit IE and the stalls and lags go away that should be something to consider.



As for the Photoshop, I would definitely dig into the user manual for that version and see what they say about using MacOS VM and using Photoshop swapfiles.



As for Sherlock indexing, open Sherlock, go to the Find menu, and Index volumes. There you should be able to enable/disable indexing. Of course, indexing may or may not be the cause of the problems you describe. You would certainly notice a window showing a Sherlock indexing operation occuring. That would certainly make the computer seem unresponsive, at which point you could cancel the index operation and be on your way. If the computer is unresponsive even when no indexing operation is apparent, then disabling indexing probably won't fix anything.



It's not really a memory problem with OS9.x, much more than a memory problem under heavy use over the course of a workday. Once you get more than 8 or 9 memory-hungry applications running at once and heavily used throughout the day, they may get a little feisty for some elbow room (free RAM) over time. Since Mac OS stacks each app you start in memory virtually back-to-back, there isn't any room for that app to expand into memory contiguously even though there is plenty of free ram elsewhere. This and that, yadda-yadda-yadda. That's how I have come to understand it.



Aside from that, you can sidestep this scenario somewhat by carefully choosing your memory allocation settings and choosing to start certain memory-hungry applications last.



There's more I'd like to elaborate on, but I got to go right now. Feel free to ask more questions, and I'll get back to you later. An interesting piece of software you may consider looking into is Peek-a-Boo at:

<a href="http://www.clarkwoodsoftware.com"; target="_blank">www.clarkwoodsoftware.com</a>

That way you will have something to visually see how your apps are getting loaded into your memory space.