Why do the memory resources used by Creative Cloud keep growing on my IMAC

Question

Why do I have problems with my iMAC and not when using a Mac Pro laptop (i7 16GB RAM, 512MB SSD) or my Windows 10 PC ( i7 16GB RAM PC)?

I have an IMac i5 8GB RAM, ITB (Mid 2011 running Sierra 10.12.4) which had the original Creative Cloud installation and now rendered absolutely useless if any remnant of Creative Cloud is present. What happens is that the applications won't either install or uninstall properly and the iMAC becomes progressively slower to a standstill and a check on Activity Monitor shows all the physical memory has been taken up and into huge swap files.

e.g. on 1st June 2017 after eventually trying again to install Photoshop which took forever to install and then wouldn't work I noted in Activity monitor:

CCLibrary 36.68 GB,

ExManBridgeTalkCmd 2.18 GB

AdobeGCClient 1.42 GB

all on an iMAC that has 8GB only of physical memory!

In the Activity Manager I can force quit the items but they quickly re-establish and grow again!

The only way I can use this iMAC as a functioning computer is to remove anything to do with Adobe with CleanMyMac3.

I can only think in my case the solution is to reformat the hard drive and start again as there must surely be something lurking in the installation but loath to do this because I have no idea what is causing these files to grow in real time to many times the physical memory of the machine.

Any help much appreciated.

Peter

kglad · Accepted Answer

uninstall everything cc including preferences, https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/help/uninstall-remove-app.html

then uninstall the cc desktop app, https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/help/uninstall-creative-cloud-desktop-app.html

clean your computer of cc files per http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cscleanertool.html

restart your computer (don't skip this)

reinstall the cc desktop app, https://creative.adobe.com/products/creative-cloud.

disable font and file sync'ing

use the desktop app to install your cc programs/trials

unique_Whisper98A5 · Answer

AT LONG LONG LONG LAST SUCCESS! BY REFORMATTING THE HARD DISK!

I have said all along and for over a year that my hunch was that the only thing to do to cure the problem was to reformat the hard disk on the iMAC and reinstall the Mac OS - I took the bull by the horns and did this this morning very painlessly (reboot Cmd + R) re-formatted the hard disk followed by reinstall of Sierra 10.12.5 and everything works perfectly.

Before I did this this morning the iMAC computer was almost completely frozen and no wonder - CCLibrary was 44GB (yes 44GB!!) AdobeGCClient 6.74GB and kernel 4.74GB all with just 8GB of physical memory. This was with just the Creative Cloud Desktop and no other Adobe products installed (they wouldn't install anyway).

After the reformat of the hard disk and reinstallation of the OS and with Photoshop installed as well, CCLibrary is now just 48MB (yes MB not GB) no sign of AdobeGCClient or kernel at all.

What has amazed me is how smoothly the reformatting and restore of the OS was and how infinitely quicker this approach was to trying to all the previous attempts with the problem of gobbled up resources and an ineffective computer.

Now it all works fine, the iMAC is like a brand new one and I just hope this helps other users who have had Adobe painful experiences like myself.

Peter

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