FLASH: Flash: is: more Mac troubleshooting, and an apology was: Re:Flash crash

[Frederico]

<humblepie>

First, I'd like to apologize for spouting off on the list today. I've 

been assisting in the IT support of a new client, formerly mostly 

Windoze, who'd recently been "forced" by a temperamental artiste to 

convert the graphics department back to Mac, and for some reason, they 

thought that meant they had to convert the whole company at one time back 

to a single platform (ultimately, a fine idea, but you can imagine the 

uproar). As such, a select minority (two) from the  windoze-centric side 

of the company has a huge chip on its shoulder, and are (perhaps only 

subconsciously) running their Macs into the ground, and just don't want 

to accept what they've gained, instead favoring to needlessly increase 

the IT budget beyond what is needed.  Anyhow, the attitude and lack of 

simple preventative care just has me on edge, and since decorum forbids 

me to chastise these users, I ended up taking it out on the Mac faithful. 

It was arrogant, unneccesary, and I apologize. 

</humblepie>


<penance>

 

Rachel  said:


>What order should one quit out of applications and

>how do you go about purging the RAM?


Hi Rachel,


 It is sound Macwisdom to quit applications in the reverse order in which 

they are launched, e.g., if you opened Flash4 first, Freehand second, and 

Dreamweaver last, and you no longer need all of them open, you should 

quit DW, then FH, then F4. Under no circumstances should you just quit 

either Flash or Freehand, leaving Dreamweaver open, and then launch 

another application. This will likely cause the RAM to be fragmented, and 

thus make any newly opened apps unstable. Repeated quitting and lunching 

out of order will eventually (six hours to several days) lead to a crash, 

sooner if the System is poorly maintained or configured, and/or depends 

heavily on Virtual Memory.


Another element, depending on which Mac you use, whether or not you use 

VM or RAM Doubler, and what applications you use, is that some apps are 

poorly written (such as Netscape), and fail to release their memory 

allocations even upon being quit, even if quit in proper reverse order, 

and fragmentation of new apps is effectively guaranteed, as are 

subsequent Type 1,2, 3 and 11 crashes.


So, what to do about it?  First, you need to employ the reverse-quit 

strategy, and second, you should purge the RAM to help release memory.


To aid in the former, if under MacOS 8.5, you have the Application Pallet 

now built into the System, and if you use another piece of freeware 

called Prestissimo <http://www.polymorph.net/prestissimo.html>, you can 

easily set your application pallete prefs to display apps in the order 

they are launched, as opposed to alphabetically, as you'll find the 

default in the Menubar: Application Menu (upper-right corner of the Mac 

display). (note: This can also be done via MacOSHelp, but Prestissimo 

makes it much easier)


Now, if you set the pallet to display somewhere on screen, you get a 

visual reminder of the launch order, and you can more easily decide what 

should be quit (and restarted if needed) in order to prevent 

fragmentation. (note: many pieces of shareware, such as GoMac provide 

similar functionality, you can decide if you already have this feature 

elsewhere).


The second phase of this is MacOSPurge 

<http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Archive/cfg/mac-os-purge-101.

hqx> , which, while not always guaranteed to produce satisfactory 

results, will at least assist you in deciding if a reboot is needed.  If 

you place an alias of Purge in a convenient location, you can purge RAM 

upon quitting apps (it only takes a second), and it will auto-launch the 

'About This Computer' window, and allow you to quickly determine if your 

RAM is in good shape, by adding up the amount of RAM used by all listed 

apps, with the 'Largest Unused Block' amount, and it should be equal to 

the amount of available RAM (the 'Built-in Memory' figure if VM is 'off', 

the 'Virtual Memory' figure if VM is 'on').


If you find a discrepancy in the amount of available RAM, and a second or 

third use of Purge fails to clear the matter, it's time to reboot, else 

beg for an application or System crash.


Getting used to this procedure is quite easy, and soon it will become 

second nature. As always, when in doubt, simply reboot, even shutdown for 

a few moments, then restart, which is guaranteed to clear the RAM, and 

provide you with a new and stable foundation upon which to work.


If you don't have OS 8.5 or better, write back and I'll let you know how 

to do it on earlier Systems, and there are, obviously, numerous 

variations on this theme to suit your tastes. Of course, this is not the 

entire picture to RAM management, as I mentioned previously, use of 

dedicated scratch/VM partitions and RAM disks is highly recommended for 

even the graphics novice.


Feel free to ask questions on this or other subjects, I'm happy to help.

</penance>


Regards, and Happy Friday


Frederico


      ~La Fortuna aiuta gli Audaci!~



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