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Mac memory leak

For some reason my Mac which is running Leopard uses a lot of memory on a process called SystemUIServer. Whenever I restart my Mac, a week or two later this process is taking up 300 - 400 MB of my memory.

In a desperate attempt to fix this, I tried killing the process by opening a terminal window and entering the following command: 

killall SystemUIServer

Oddly enough, this seems to fix the problem. Once I kill the SystemUIServer process it comes back up again by itself (all of the items in the menu bar disappear and then come back real quickly) and it's much better behaved. It no longer seems to consume a large amount of resources. It's been several weeks since I restarted the process and SystemUIServer is currently taking up about 25 MB... a great improvement. If your Leopard Mac seems to be using up a lot of RAM, you might want to try restarting this process to see if it fixes things for you too.
Rating: 100% positive, 4 total Votes
Categories: Mac Leopard memory diagnostics
Added: on Jul 28, 2008 at 7:30 am
Added By: an anonymous user

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nice one. not sure if it'll last over time like you say, but I tried this and it really knocked down the memory usage.
– Added by an anonymous user on Jul 28, 2008 at 9:49 am
The SystemUIServer process is related to the items in your menu bar. If you have any items that connect to the internet and they are unable to connect, this can sometimes cause the process to consume a lot of resources. For me, the issue is Google Notifier. Since it starts in the menu bar when my computer is starting up and it can't yet connect to the internet, SystemUIServer starts taking up a lot of resources. But when I then kill the process, it can connect just fine so it's well behaved after that. If you use the Google Notifier in your menu bar, or any other menu bar item that connects to the internet, you may be more susceptible to this problem, and so this solution may work best for you.
– Added by an anonymous user on Jul 29, 2008 at 6:51 am
I have got the same problem.
161 SystemUIServer me 28.9 7 596.29 MB 935.43 MB Intel
It bloats and hog all the meory. even when i boot clean from safemode safe boot.
Is it leopard problem ?
– Added by an anonymous user on Aug 22, 2008 at 3:45 am
The bloating stopped ONLY after removing both bluetooth and Airport from the menubar.
now its 128 SystemUIServer me 0.0 6 6.67 MB 904.00 MB Intel.
Quite outrages.
– Added by an anonymous user on Aug 22, 2008 at 7:45 am
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