Mac RAM full issues

Hi all...

I use word 2011 a lot, with medium length documents (10-20pages) It sometimes takes 2 gigs of RAM just for word. Why is that? none of the files themselves are over 50mb. The Mac then freezes or various programs stop responding (primarily mail). Also the task kernel_task sometimes takes upwards of 500mb... what can be done about that? is there some memory purge procedure or software for the Mac.. or some other system level solution? we use the same documents exactly with Word on PC that has the same amount of RAM (4GB), and never had such problems...we made sure Office and the OSX got all available updates.

Thanks for any help.. attached is the Activity monitor process list...(after quitting word when it froze)

OS X 10.9, Mac Air 11.6, 4GB Ram, SSD

More info;
How many apps do you have running at the same time?
How full is your hard drive and what size is it?
Are you running any AV software?

visualsup said:

I use word 2011 a lot, with medium length documents (10-20pages) It sometimes takes 2 gigs of RAM just for word. Why is that? none of the files themselves are over 50mb.

Click to expand...

I don't see Word anywhere in that list (unless I'm getting old and missed it). In any case, do you have multiple documents open and are they media heavy?

visualsup said:

Also the task kernel_task sometimes takes upwards of 500mb... what can be done about that?

Click to expand...

If anything, that's low. The kernel process can easily go well over 1 GB if the memory resources are there. In other words, that's not out of the ordinary.

Maybe you could post the Log if it crashed it will create a log.

Answers...

Thanks for all the replies... the drive is the standard 128GB SSD and it has about 30GB free. Word froze and was exited, that's why it doesn't appear... no AV software. Yes I run a lot of apps and the word documents have a dozen or so pictures and tables... but they are small to medium size in mb (max 50mb). I'll try to post an error log when word 2011 crashes...thanks

50mb for a Word document is a lot. That said, the Mac version of Office has never had quite the performance of the Windows version so there may be a bottleneck there.

I have a similar issue with my late 2012 iMac, but only since running Mavericks.

I have 8GB of RAM but over half of it is in use with only Finder open. The main hog is kernel_task with sometimes up to 1GB being used for that. I've installed memory clean but that doesn't help. Only re-booting makes for more RAM available but that doesn't last long.

Mavericks handles memory differently. If the machine is left switched on for long enough all available ram will be used. It doesn't cause any performance degradation though because it can free up (or compress) memory at the drop of a hat should you open new apps.
Really there is no need for a memory cleaner (if there ever was) and the memory purge command no longer works in Mavericks.

thanks for the heads up MacDuck

MacDuck said:

If the machine is left switched on for long enough all available ram will be used. It doesn't cause any performance degradation though because it can free up (or compress) memory at the drop of a hat should you open new apps.

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Not quite. Memory is released when an app is closed but it's allocated as inactive memory which can be freed at a moment's notice. Thus, memory isn't consumed completely since, it could be argued, that inactive memory is, for all intents and purposes, free memory. So, if all of your memory is being used up over time, it sounds like you've either got a leak or you've got too many apps open.

Thanks for the clarification, vansmith. It actually seems to be working quite well though it's a bit disconcerting at first to have apparent high ram use figures showing.

Unless you're having issues, it's best to avoid Activity Monitor. Otherwise, you turn into a "digital hypochondriac"

vansmith said:

Unless you're having issues, it's best to avoid Activity Monitor. Otherwise, you turn into a "digital hypochondriac"

Click to expand...

That might be a good idea

That said, the Mac version of Office has never had quite the performance of the Windows version so there may be a bottleneck there.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, very true. I have Office 2011 and Office 2010 and while the file structure is the same, the Windows version is definitely more elegant (and faster).

Here is the error log of the Word 2011 crash..

osxx said:

Maybe you could post the Log if it crashed it will create a log.

Click to expand...

Thanks in advance...!

kextstat | grep -v com.apple

MacBook-Air-6:~ MacName$ kextstat | grep -v com.apple
Index Refs Address Size Wired Name (Version) <Linked Against>
110 3 0xffffff7f82546000 0x45000 0x45000 org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv (4.3.0) <7 5 4 3 1>
111 0 0xffffff7f8258b000 0x8000 0x8000 org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxUSB (4.3.0) <110 42 36 7 5 4 3 1>
112 0 0xffffff7f82593000 0x5000 0x5000 org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetFlt (4.3.0) <110 7 5 4 3 1>
113 0 0xffffff7f82598000 0x6000 0x6000 org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetAdp (4.3.0) <110 5 4 1>

Your problem may be Virtual Box together with Mavericks since several stability issues exist with that combo until Oracle releases new firmware.
If you Google 10.9 and Virtual Box you will see several problems unless they have sent out an update supposedly Parallels has all there VM patched.
The other thing that will hit you hard is trying to run both OS's off of only 4GB of ram you really need 8.
As both 10.9 and Windows 7/8 all want 4GB of ram.

osxx said:

Your problem may be Virtual Box together with Mavericks since several stability issues exist with that combo until Oracle releases new firmware.
If you Google 10.9 and Virtual Box you will see several problems unless they have sent out an update supposedly Parallels has all there VM patched.
The other thing that will hit you hard is trying to run both OS's off of only 4GB of ram you really need 8.
As both 10.9 and Windows 7/8 all want 4GB of ram.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply but I don't use Parallels or Virtual box...why did you think I do...?

vansmith said:

Unless you're having issues, it's best to avoid Activity Monitor. Otherwise, you turn into a "digital hypochondriac"

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LOL! Funny.

visualsup said:

Thanks for your reply but I don't use Parallels or Virtual box...why did you think I do...?

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The log you posted had virtual box kext in it.

Ah you are right, I installed it once, a few weeks ago, but never used it, I didn't know it is actually loaded. Of course, I'll remove it. (Those issues with Word 2011 started happening long before that). Thanks