Slowly...Very slowly!

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HI

I'm a newbie here. I have a 2009 Mac mini (with an optical drive) and recently the SBBOD has been very prevalent even when I'm just running safari. According to my activity monitor I am using right now 1.03 GB of ram!

The mac is slower than an asthmatic ant with heavy shopping! (any blackadder fans will recognise the joke)

Would upgrading the ram help?

Many thanks:D
 
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Possibly. A number of things can cause the beach ball of doom.

How much ram does your system currently have?

Some other things to check:

How much space is left on the system hard drive?
How many applications do you have running in the background?


Might be time to download and run Onyx.
 
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Hi

Thanks For replying

I have 2 gb of ram

I'm running nothing in the background.

I'll try Onyx.:D
 
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A full hard drive can also significantly slow your computer down. Try doing a cleanup and repair of your discs and if the machine is still slow, then up the ram.

Hope Onyx does the trick!
 
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Hi

Ran onyx and it worked...for a while. I've seen so many guides to upping the ram on the mac mini. I can upgrade them on pc's but i'm worried about breaking the mini. Can anyone tell me how easy/difficult to upgrade the ram themsleves?

Also how much ram can the mac actually take and use? I know officially the mini can take 3GB ram but what is the unofficial story? I don't want any unnecessary expense.

Thanks.
 

cwa107


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Hi

Ran onyx and it worked...for a while. I've seen so many guides to upping the ram on the mac mini. I can upgrade them on pc's but i'm worried about breaking the mini. Can anyone tell me how easy/difficult to upgrade the ram themsleves?

Also how much ram can the mac actually take and use? I know officially the mini can take 3GB ram but what is the unofficial story? I don't want any unnecessary expense.

Thanks.

Before you jump to that conclusion, check the HDD for space. Generally speaking, you need to have 20% or more free space on your system drive. If that's not the case, the problem is likely heavy fragmentation and the OS not having enough elbow room - upgrading the RAM probably won't make a huge difference in that case.
 
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Before you jump to that conclusion, check the HDD for space. Generally speaking, you need to have 20% or more free space on your system drive. If that's not the case, the problem is likely heavy fragmentation and the OS not having enough elbow room - upgrading the RAM probably won't make a huge difference in that case.

I have 112.52 GB free. Plus earlier tonight I had a startup problem. i got a blue screen and could only fix it by unplugging all hdds printers etc and restarting.
 

cwa107


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I have 112.52 GB free. Plus earlier tonight I had a startup problem. i got a blue screen and could only fix it by unplugging all hdds printers etc and restarting.

That's kind of worrying - especially after you just ran Onyx on it, which usually does filesystem maintenance. You may want to verify the integrity of that HDD using a tool like the SMART Utility:

Volitans Software- Makers of SMART Utility for the Mac

You can do a quick check with the free trial. That should give you some idea of how healthy (physically) that drive is.
 
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That's kind of worrying - especially after you just ran Onyx on it, which usually does filesystem maintenance. You may want to verify the integrity of that HDD using a tool like the SMART Utility:

Volitans Software- Makers of SMART Utility for the Mac

You can do a quick check with the free trial. That should give you some idea of how healthy (physically) that drive is.

Just ran onyx and SMART Utility. Everything appears ok, Still thinking of ram upgrade but open to other suggestions.
 

dtravis7


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One thing you did not mention. What version of OSX are you running? If it's Lion, 2GB Ram on Lion is you open more than one thing at a time can be very limiting.

What are the exact specs of your Mini? If it's truly a 2009 it takes a lot more than 3GB RAM.

Also even though SMART Utility says it's fine, there could be issues with your hard drive starting to die/
 
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Well I can't speak for the Mac Mini as I've never owned one. However, on my iMac it was as simple as unplugging the machine, unscrewing the little faceplate on the bottom on the computer, popping the old chips out, and putting the new chips in. It's not hard and took only about 10 minutes (if that).

The only thing that requires caution is that you make sure that you insert the new chips in the correct way and make sure they are completely inserted (you should hear them click into place). The chips only go in the machine in one direction so if you aren't doing it correctly, then they won't click into place. Just take note of the way the old chips are inserted into the machine when you take them out and mimic that with the new ones.

Good luck! It's not hard though so I doubt you need it.
 

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