Memory management problem?

[GUARDIAN]

Hi All,

I've been working on a project to get macosx leopard running on a HASSEE laptop.

I've been at it for about 2 weeks now, and finally have a booting system, with wifi, ethernet, PS2, USB, and the trackpad working fine.

The issue I'm having is a little hard to describe, I have searched the forum, but couldn't find anything, so I apologize if this has been asked before.

I'm using iATKOS V7, and have 1GB of ram, on a Pentium Duel Core.

OSX boots fast, and everything seems fine, Itunes is snappy, the Dock's animations are fast and smooth but certain things seem to trigger a compleate halt.

if I open Safari, it runs fine untill I go to certain websites (meebo and the firefox download page are good examples)

the moment I go to one of these pages, they will start to load (the firefox page gets about half way) then the hard-drive light becomes solidly lit, and the entire machine will just grind to a halt.. even typing commands into a console to kill the procsss takes a good 3 of 4 minutes.

Skype is another good example, It loads, logs in, then just hangs the whole system, again, the HDD light becomes solid, and the system slows to a crawl.

TROUBLESHOOTING SO FAR:
I have wached the system monitor while these apps do this, and nothing seems out of place, memory usage is fine, CPU usage is at about 1 or 2 %, Net I/O sits at virtually nothing.

The only thing I do notice is safari takes up 1.9G of virtual memory.

I've tried updating safari

I've tried installing firefox, but it only opens for a few seconds, then crashes back to desktop.

I've tried ther CPUS=1 kernel option

I've tried wiping and re-installing iATKOS from scratch

I've tried booting with the -f kernel flag

----

I know this problem is solvable, as the first time I installed iATKOS it was not happening, this only happend after I tried upgrading OSX to 10.5.8, but I have done a HDD wipe and re-install since then.:-/

[lanceomni]

Welcome to InfiniteMac! :)

* You say you only have 1gb of ram? There is a common issue related to 64bit memory addressing but that usually starts giving people problems with 3.2 - 4gb or greater of memory.

Network drivers can also cause issues like this.

Please provide us with some specifications about your system (CPU, Motherboard, Graphics & Model Number if applicable). Adding more specific information allows us to respond quickly with more precise answers. Chipset, LAN, Audio & If your Graphics are integrated or not, are excellent additions.

You can also place this information in your "Signature". It will then appear on every post you make. How to edit your signature: http://www.infinitemac.com/faq.php?faq=vb3_user_profile#faq_vb3_signatures_av atars

[GUARDIAN]

Processor: 1.93Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 1GB 667Mhz DDR2 SDRAM
Graphics: SIS something or rather (I know its not supported)
Wifi: Ralink Technology RT2501USB (pnp ID 2573)
Using kernel extension "Ralink RT2500 RT73USB"
(I had to delete the "Replug" extension as it caused panic on boot)

Wired: Realtek RTL8139


Actually... after thinking about this and going through the list, along with wat you said about network drivers, I have a feeling it may be the wired ethernet driver, as after I rebuilt, I also included the RTL8139 driver, I should have thought of this before.

When the trouble started, I got rid of the wifi extensions, but not the wired, so I'll give that a go now, and report back.:cool:

[GUARDIAN]

removing the PCGenRTL8139Ethernet kernel extension did not help

I jsut found out its actually using the RT73 driver for wifi... I'm removing this now, and leaving the RT2500 drivers

[GUARDIAN]

ok, so I got rid of all the wifi drivers, and just put back RT2500USB and RT2500Replug

the RT2500Replug no longer causes a kernel panic, but the "USBwifi" program now says "NO DEVICE"

[lanceomni]

If you cant get Quartz Extreme or Core Image QE/Ci supported by your graphics card you will have issues. I don't remember getting full system freezes but a lot of applications require it to start.

[GUARDIAN]

ok.. an update...

I did yet ANOTHER full reinstall of OSX, finely tuning the selection as I went, and this time, things went fine..

I have no hardware acceleration, but I don't think this can be helped, and to be honest, this laptop won't need it anyway, I'm only using it for MSN, facebook etc...

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

[GUARDIAN]

I take it back, the problem hasn't gone away, its just not as bad as it was...

If go to wikipedia.org in firefox, *bang* slowness and non responsive to the point I can't open a terminal to kill it.

It works in Safari though..

[GUARDIAN]

I'm guessing this is something I may just have to live with, OSX runs great on this laptop, I just can't watch DVD's, I have to use quicktime instead of VLC, Safari instead of firefox... but apart from that, it seems to be going well.