I have a white MacBook and I, too, was about to take it to be repaired, I searched Activity Monitor and though the USB Print wasn't appearing to be taking so much output, I did the search in Terminal, found that USB Print was taking 99.4% of output and then used Activity Monitor to force quit that process. Fan stopped almost immediately!
Thanks so much for the tips!
Quote:
Originally Posted by PB
Oh, while still in Terminal, you can get the PID number for the processes through top (the first column from the left in the top output). You enter then "kill -9 PID number". For example
kill -9 1293
if the process you want to kill has 1293 as PID in the top output.
A few months ago we bought a copy of a product called Scannerz for testing hard drives. It comes with something called FSE which is a file system events monitor. FSE is provided because Scannerz is supposed to be run with the machine in as quiet a state as possible, and if something is running in the background that's doing a lot of disk activity, it may not show up on Activity Monitor as a big deal, but it might still be very active. Scannerz needs that sort of stuff stopped.
A lot of disk activity = fans running.
I don't have the web site handy, but I'm sure a google can find it.
I checked cpu usage in the terminal and didn't get anything above 5% (firefox). The fan issue has been getting steadily worse. My computer is almost 3 years old now. Would a fan replacement help? Could dust be an issue?
The activity monitor showed that the program itself was the highest consumer of the CPU, but by using the code in terminal that PB pointed me to (thanks PB) it turned out that 99% of the CPU was being used by the print manager that was trying to print to a non connected printer. If you check the printer setting and kill the process my fan dropped and CPU cooled almost immediately.
Yeah, rogue CPU hogging things are usually the cause of big fan noise.
I checked cpu usage in the terminal and didn't get anything above 5% (firefox). The fan issue has been getting steadily worse. My computer is almost 3 years old now. Would a fan replacement help? Could dust be an issue?
Did you choose the option to "Show All Processes"?
i had this same problem with my macbook pro. high fan speed but no process responsible. i finally took it in to the applestore, they cleaned the dust out, and things have been great ever since. btw - the applestore didn't charge me for this, and my machine was not covered by applecare.
i had this same problem with my macbook pro. high fan speed but no process responsible. i finally took it in to the applestore, they cleaned the dust out, and things have been great ever since. btw - the applestore didn't charge me for this, and my machine was not covered by applecare.
Cool. Yes I have seen quite a lot of dust buildup on the MacBook Intel Core1/2 fans. When all else fails, clean out that sucker!
Greatly appreciate this thread. My 2008 white Macbook has had the fan running and I couldn't figure out why. Watching processes for a while showed a lot of Mail activity, but not constant. What kept popping to the top was CarboniteDaemon. It wasn't always there, but it got there often enough that I thought I'd try pausing my backup. Did that, and within about four minutes the fan had slowed and then stopped.
Much relief.
I'll turn Carbonite back on when I'm no longer at the library trying to concentrate!
Comments
Thanks so much for the tips!
Oh, while still in Terminal, you can get the PID number for the processes through top (the first column from the left in the top output). You enter then "kill -9 PID number". For example
kill -9 1293
if the process you want to kill has 1293 as PID in the top output.
A few months ago we bought a copy of a product called Scannerz for testing hard drives. It comes with something called FSE which is a file system events monitor. FSE is provided because Scannerz is supposed to be run with the machine in as quiet a state as possible, and if something is running in the background that's doing a lot of disk activity, it may not show up on Activity Monitor as a big deal, but it might still be very active. Scannerz needs that sort of stuff stopped.
A lot of disk activity = fans running.
I don't have the web site handy, but I'm sure a google can find it.
I checked cpu usage in the terminal and didn't get anything above 5% (firefox). The fan issue has been getting steadily worse. My computer is almost 3 years old now. Would a fan replacement help? Could dust be an issue?
Yeah, rogue CPU hogging things are usually the cause of big fan noise.
Did you choose the option to "Show All Processes"?
one possible solution -
i had this same problem with my macbook pro. high fan speed but no process responsible. i finally took it in to the applestore, they cleaned the dust out, and things have been great ever since. btw - the applestore didn't charge me for this, and my machine was not covered by applecare.
Cool. Yes I have seen quite a lot of dust buildup on the MacBook Intel Core1/2 fans. When all else fails, clean out that sucker!
Greatly appreciate this thread. My 2008 white Macbook has had the fan running and I couldn't figure out why. Watching processes for a while showed a lot of Mail activity, but not constant. What kept popping to the top was CarboniteDaemon. It wasn't always there, but it got there often enough that I thought I'd try pausing my backup. Did that, and within about four minutes the fan had slowed and then stopped.
Much relief.
I'll turn Carbonite back on when I'm no longer at the library trying to concentrate!