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jokell82 · Jan 12, 2008, 10:39 AM

Having a very strange problem with my MacBook. As of last night my fans always run at full speed and my CPU is being taxed heavily, although I'm not running any programs at all! I can't figure out what's going on, I've tried restarting and force quitting anything I see under "top" in the terminal, but nothing seems to work. Here's a picture of my Activity Monitor:

Anyone have any idea of what this could be? Am I going to have to reinstall my OS?!?!

Edit - And since I have no idea what the problem is I didn't know exactly where to put this. Mods feel free to move it if it should be in OS X or Software.

megasad · Jan 12, 2008, 11:03 AM

Click on the "My Processes" pull-down menu and select "All Processes" instead to see if it is some system thing going crazy.

besson3c · Jan 12, 2008, 02:40 PM

My guess is an mds (Spotlight) thread

jokell82 · Jan 12, 2008, 02:46 PM

Well it just stopped on its own. No idea what it was. I did check all processes (even ran top in the terminal which shows things the activity monitor sometimes doesn't) and nothing was shown to use that much cpu.

At least it's gone now though.

seanc · Jan 12, 2008, 04:16 PM

Have you got a Canon printer?
Sometimes part of the printing software will hang and take up lots of CPU usage, causing the fans to run at a high speed.

jokell82 · Jan 12, 2008, 04:41 PM

Nope. No peripherals at all were connected and no printer drivers are installed. I'm usually pretty good at figuring out things like this but it totally had me stumped.

ibook_steve · Jan 12, 2008, 10:43 PM

I'd try to relaunch the Finder even though it says it's not using much CPU. There could be a copy or a trash empty in the background that's stuck or something. Relaunch the Finder and see if that helps.

Steve

jokell82 · Jan 12, 2008, 10:51 PM

Originally Posted by ibook_steve

I'd try to relaunch the Finder even though it says it's not using much CPU. There could be a copy or a trash empty in the background that's stuck or something. Relaunch the Finder and see if that helps.

Steve

It's gone now, but the problem persisted between one logout and two restarts. It wasn't a stuck finder process (which would've stopped with just the logout).

Chaseme · Jan 16, 2008, 11:21 PM

I'm having the exact same thing; the fan is running at a very high speed.

I do have a canon printer so I just deleted it off the activity monitor as it was listed under CPU as 100.
Now the fan is not spinning.

SInce this happened, the battery has run down very fast from full charge to no charge in about an hour.

I'll see what happens now since I deleted the printer activity.

JustinHorne · Jan 17, 2008, 12:08 AM

I've been debating about posting this as well, but I"m getting it too.
C2D MacBook, 2.0, 2GB.

It SEEMS to be happening mostly when just browsing with Safari, but I don't know if that's correlation or causation, as I spend the vast majority of time just on Safari.
I'll be on forums, etc, and I'll hear my fans go crazy. I open iStat, 6300 RPM, with no tasks being reported that are taking up my CPU, and temps in the 170s.

I don't know what's up.

Cold Warrior · Jan 17, 2008, 12:15 AM

Are you showing all processes, not just user ones?

bishopazrael · Jan 17, 2008, 12:24 AM

Yeah... chime me in for a 3rd. Haven't checked on the processes yet... being on drugs makes me lazy.. but then again...surfing the web stoned on vicodin is kinda fun. I'll say this though. I noticed the fans running the arabesque screensaver on leopard. I just got this macbook 2 days ago and I bumped the ram to 2gb. Got the next 2gb stick on the way. But this fan thing is kinda weird. I've got my macbook sitting on a really nice cooler pad w/ 2 standard sized fans from a PC case inside of it. I'm thinking I'm gonna get the core2duo temp widget thingy and keep an eye on my temps. I know the fans speed up in response to heat, but this just seems kinda weird. Didn't happen until I did the most current updates, come to think of it.

Chaseme · Jan 17, 2008, 02:35 PM

Yep, mine started acting up after the last update.

JustinHorne · Jan 20, 2008, 11:26 PM

This is getting annoying now, no idea what's causing it.. I've been paying more attention, trying to open Activity Monitor in time, but it never shows anything that should be causing it... Very odd.

Dork. · Jan 21, 2008, 12:17 AM

Remember to check memory as well as processes. Running low on available memory will cause swapping, which will get the heard drive (and maybe some fans) whirring. It would probably not last very long, though....