Re: Running out of system software memory

Bruce Carter (bcarter@mentor.idbsu.edu)
Fri, 19 Jul 1996 23:56:41 EDT

At 6:20 PM 7/18/96, Madeline Buchanan wrote:
>I upgraded to System 7.5.3 from 7.5 and after using it a while, got a
>message saying that I was running out of memory and needed to close windows
>and applications. I closed all of them and nothing but the finder was
>showing in the upper right hand corner. When I tried to open the hard
>drive, I got a message saying that I was out of memory and needed to close
>windows and applications, even though nothing else was open. I restarted
>the machine and everything was OK.

This is a bug in the OS, or in a combination of extensions. I have run
into it as well. The only way to get around it is to restart. You can
quit applications and close windows all day long and you'll still get the
"not enough memory" message, even though the About box may show many
megabytes free.

I've heard several different stories about why this happens, a memory leak
in the Finder is the most likely, but it could be some obscure extension
conflict.

You can adjust the amount of memory assigned to the Finder by using
ResEdit, but it won't help this particular problem.

--
Bruce Carter, Division Head          Instructional Development Division
Simplot/Micron Instructional Technology Center      (208)385-1851@voice
Boise State University, Boise, ID  83725              (208)385-1856@fax
http://mentor.idbsu.edu/BruceCarter/home.html  bcarter@mentor.idbsu.edu