Macbook Alu Fan Craze (No Printer Jobs)
Hi all,
After years of waiting, I finally got my first MacBook after a pleasant experience with my 1st gen iPod Touch last April. I didn't have any problems with it (as expected), but now there is something bothering me.
After my dad took it from my room while I was asleep and gave it back to me two days later, my Mac sometimes starts to suddenly increase fan speed to the point it becomes so loud it is scary. I get panicked everything it happens and force shut down because I swear the fan was going to fail. I suspected my dad did something, since the Mac was turned on downloading some stuff but the screen lid was off and it is so silent I thought my dad wouldn't notice it was on.
He said he turned it off and didn't do anything with it during those two days. I've searched a lot on the internet and only found complaints about excessively high fan noise in MacBooks when there are uncompleted printer jobs. I checked my System Preferences Printer tab, but there was nothing there.
Here on Brazil, Apple Store do not exist, and authorized tech support is far away from where I live (because there are not many of them). Apple won't accept e-mails since it is not an iTunes issue, and I won't dare to make a call to the USA. Before bothering my father with this, I would like your advice: what could it be? The noise is surely coming the fans, as the HD is only doing its standard read/write/head moving sounds. Not from the DVD drive either. My strongest guess is that *something* managed to get partially stuck on the fan, which could explain why the speed increase normally only starts when I slightly tilt the computer and why everything is normal while it stays above a perfectly straight surface (like a table).
After years of waiting, I finally got my first MacBook after a pleasant experience with my 1st gen iPod Touch last April. I didn't have any problems with it (as expected), but now there is something bothering me.
After my dad took it from my room while I was asleep and gave it back to me two days later, my Mac sometimes starts to suddenly increase fan speed to the point it becomes so loud it is scary. I get panicked everything it happens and force shut down because I swear the fan was going to fail. I suspected my dad did something, since the Mac was turned on downloading some stuff but the screen lid was off and it is so silent I thought my dad wouldn't notice it was on.
He said he turned it off and didn't do anything with it during those two days. I've searched a lot on the internet and only found complaints about excessively high fan noise in MacBooks when there are uncompleted printer jobs. I checked my System Preferences Printer tab, but there was nothing there.
Here on Brazil, Apple Store do not exist, and authorized tech support is far away from where I live (because there are not many of them). Apple won't accept e-mails since it is not an iTunes issue, and I won't dare to make a call to the USA. Before bothering my father with this, I would like your advice: what could it be? The noise is surely coming the fans, as the HD is only doing its standard read/write/head moving sounds. Not from the DVD drive either. My strongest guess is that *something* managed to get partially stuck on the fan, which could explain why the speed increase normally only starts when I slightly tilt the computer and why everything is normal while it stays above a perfectly straight surface (like a table).
Comments
bit confused, does fan speed only increase when u tilt the laptop? and another thing are you running any programs before the speed starts to increase (uTorrent can hog processor resources, causing fan speed to increase), download smcfancontrol and the fan speed should be no higher than 6200rpm (give or take 50), tell me clearly what you do when the speed increases and i will be glad to help, congrats on ur new macbook x
Thanks for the reply.
The fan only starts to increase speed like hell when the mac is tilted while on. This happens even with absolutely no apps running. I'm going to download smcfancontrol right away and tell you what happens.
I installed it and, while switching from the high speed mode back to the default one, the fans got crazy again. As I panicked to switch the computer off , I noticed the menu bar showed rpm kept falling, maybe an indication that the failure may be caused by the system stopping controllling fan speed. It could be something with Leopard, but there has been a weird low noise from the fans even when they are "normal", and my windows partition has this too.. I still think this has something to do with something stuck in the fans, but unless I can find a screwdriver that small over here, I had better e-mail my closest authorized support service...
First, do NOT get a screwdriver and open your Macbook up - it's a Mac; not a PC and that kind of invasive procedure is usually not required. The fact that it occurs with tilting the MacBook makes me think it has something to do with the hard drive parking mechanism. Are you sure it is the fan and not the hard drive? Did your dad install anything? Do you have ANY third party utilities installed (ie. not regular apps but something that can muck with the fan settings/energy settings/CPU/or shows up in the menu bar/etc.?
Here are the things I think you should try (in this order):
First, check out your energy system preferences to see if anything there is weird - change both battery and power adapter to automatic CPU usage and see if that changes anything. If it doesn't, change both to highest CPU usage and see again. If not, change back to automatic (probably better in general)
Do you have any third party system preference panes installed? If so, post back and tell me what they are.
Try installing/reinstalling any firmware updates.
Download the 10.5.7 Combo update from Apple's website and install it over your current version (you won't lose any data but a backup is always a wise idea).
Try zapping the PRAM by restarting your Mac and holding down the command, option, p, and r keys all at the same time (starting immediately after your screen goes blue) until you hear the start up chime 3 times, then let go. It should boot normally after that.
Let me know if any of these help.
I'll be checking back. This is the beauty of the Mac community.