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mayoke · Nov 24, 2008, 09:10 PM

so over the past few days, i've noticed that my mbp has been getting crazy hot and the fan is constantly on. And all I'm doing is reading pdf's in preview, and at most having a safari window open at the same time. I'm not sure what happened! I can only remember this sort of activity when i transferred a video from a camcorder ages ago. Any advice?? What's causing the computer to go crazy and work so hard??

Ted L. Nancy · Nov 24, 2008, 10:48 PM

Have you tried resetting the pmu?

Simon · Nov 25, 2008, 01:59 AM

Sounds like a background process. Check Activity Monitor to see what kind of process is putting the CPU under high load.

xia · Nov 25, 2008, 07:42 AM

I think that there is a software error in Apple's latest system software.

I have a PB G4 12" running 10.4.11. Its fans can go ON constantly at high speed even I only have one web page in Firefox open and nothing else on my pb. The web page must contain some animations. If I open a webpage which does not have any animation, the fan will be OFF. By downloading a Flashblock (an Add On) for Firefox, the offending web page won't start the fan; of course, I won't see the animation either.

I also found that Microsoft Word 2004 can cause the same fan ON constantly, if I open a 10-20 page normal text document and started to work on it for a while. Have not figured out how to slow the fan in this Word case.

When the fan is ON, you can open the Activity Monitor (in Utilities) to see which software is causing the trouble. In both Firefox and Word cases on my pb, they alone can use up to 95% of CPU!

There was a conversation two weeks ago in this topic discussing this issue.

Simon · Nov 25, 2008, 08:02 AM

What you are seeing is Flash creating a huge CPU load. That's what causes your fan to run at high RPMs.

Flash on the Mac is a terrible CPU hog. The fan behavior is not caused by a bug in the OS or the OS update, it's the proper measure to counteract high CPU load generating lots of heat. You can remove Flash if you want. Or use something like SafariBlock to block specific Flash ads.

mayoke · Nov 25, 2008, 07:09 PM

so i was looking at activity monitor, and under preview there was something listed as print monitor or manager or something like that and it had 96 listed under CPU (with the only other thing with a number other than 0 under cpu was safari at 14) i quit that process and it seems like my fan has stopped!... only question now is why is this thing launching, and how do i get it to stop turning on each time i turn on my mac? does anyone else have something like that? (i had to go to show all processes for it to appear). Is it supposed to be there? sorry for these really basic/beginner questions... i've had my mac for all of 11 months now

and for the record, i'm not printing anything or even have a printer connected at the moment.

Ted L. Nancy · Nov 25, 2008, 07:16 PM

Originally Posted by mayoke

so i was looking at activity monitor, and under preview there was something listed as print monitor or manager or something like that and it had 96 listed under CPU (with the only other thing with a number other than 0 under cpu was safari at 14) i quit that process and it seems like my fan has stopped!... only question now is why is this thing launching, and how do i get it to stop turning on each time i turn on my mac? does anyone else have something like that? (i had to go to show all processes for it to appear). Is it supposed to be there? sorry for these really basic/beginner questions... i've had my mac for all of 11 months now

and for the record, i'm not printing anything or even have a printer connected at the moment.

Known issue. Even though you are not printing, the first step is to check your print queue.

mayoke · Nov 26, 2008, 02:10 PM

don't know how to check my print queue, but the good news is that ever since i quit that process it hasn't come back. I guess that solves my problem! Thanks everyone.

Ted L. Nancy · Nov 26, 2008, 02:15 PM

Originally Posted by mayoke

don't know how to check my print queue, but the good news is that ever since i quit that process it hasn't come back. I guess that solves my problem! Thanks everyone.

To check print queue:

System Preferences -> Print & Fax, then double click on each printer in your printer list to bring up the print queues. Just delete any print jobs that are shown in the queue(s).

Glad problem is solved (and sorry for leading you down the rabbit hole of resetting the smc-- I had presumed you had already checked your running system processes

).

seanc · Nov 26, 2008, 03:29 PM

Originally Posted by mayoke

so i was looking at activity monitor, and under preview there was something listed as print monitor or manager or something like that and it had 96 listed under CPU (with the only other thing with a number other than 0 under cpu was safari at 14) i quit that process and it seems like my fan has stopped!... only question now is why is this thing launching, and how do i get it to stop turning on each time i turn on my mac? does anyone else have something like that? (i had to go to show all processes for it to appear). Is it supposed to be there? sorry for these really basic/beginner questions... i've had my mac for all of 11 months now

and for the record, i'm not printing anything or even have a printer connected at the moment.

Have you got a Canon printer?

mayoke · Nov 26, 2008, 10:32 PM

ok, so I checked my printer queue, and lo and behold, there IS a process still sitting there waiting, and it DOES belong to a Canon printer I have. (I've got a cannon printer that prints streaks with plain b/w printing, but is fine with colour documents... i got a free HP printer with my mac, which I generally use, but I print using the canon one when I can remember just to finish off the ink that's still in it... a week or so ago, while using both printers at the same time, I accidentally sent a document to the canon, which i had intended to print off the HP one... i'm not sure how I stopped the printing, but whatever it was, it wasn't the right way to do it!)

Ted: no problem, I read about the smc thing and it didn't really sound like the problem i was having (though I was suspicious, because I have on occasion unplugged the power source from the outlet before pulling out the magsafe cord connected to the mac.... at least now I know not to do that, and that it can cause SMC problems). So you ended up teaching me something new!