Macbook unibody overheating after installation of 10.5.6?

Yes you should be concerned as that isn't normal, but it's not the fault of the update, although the update may have triggered something already wrong with your system.

Open the Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Select All Processes from the Processes drop down menu and click twice on the CPU column to display in descending order. Look for a process using a large amount of CPU time. Note what that process is then force quit it.

Now, you need to do the following:

Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions

Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger and Leopard.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now restart normally.

If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.0 for Tiger, and 4.1 for Leopard) and/or TechTool Pro (4.6.1 for Leopard) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

After completing the repairs quit DU. Now download the 10.5.6 Combo Updater and reinstall the update.

I took the cheap MBP two weeks ago and, used it for a couple of different activities...
The most taxing of which was playing Left4Dead...
It worked properly under Windows and MacOS until the large update MacOS and Firmware...
Now it overheats horribly in MacOS and gets a lot warmer in windows.
Simply unacceptable.
And the battery never lasts over 2 hours.

A very poor laptop.

nope. me too. all it does is spin (the fan). never had that problem before the upgrade to 10.5.6. logic would tell me that the upgrade is the issue, not something else.

hope they fix it soon. this puppy is hot.
happens even with mail open. doesn't seem to matter what I'm doing.

Same problem. Activity doesn't seem to be the source of the problem... I have pmTools, iTunes, vmWare and Activity Monitor using the processor equally. 5 to 20% each

Are any of you folks MobileMe members?

I just found that if I quit SyncServices and sign off MobileMe from the system prefs my fan stops spinning almost immediately.

guys the fine kids at Apple still got some .Mac work to do.....

Me too. I started noticing my unibody macbook getting really warm lately. I'm sure it never used to heat up so much. I just did a reinstall & updated yesterday too so system is clean. Thant can't be normal, can it? Not a mobileme user either.

Same here.

Before 10.5.6, normal "warm" MacBook.

After the update, 80°C and constant 6200 rpm fan regardless of what is open and running. The drive is reading and writing normally, and the heat is in the area of the processor (near the top left of the keyboard).

All diagnostics in several programs indicate no physical problem. Activity Monitor shows no out of control processes. I have applied both versions of the update with the same results. I have messed with every possible energy saver setting, and I have repaired permissions. This feels like a power management problem, but I have reset the PMU as well.

Come on, Apple. Let's get moving on this... Right now my $300 Acer Aspire One hacked to run OS X is working better!

It's Dashboard.

After seeing a Dashboard process running, I went to DB and disabled everything I could...not just closing them, but disabling them. Problem solved.

If you actually use Dashboard, you could try turning on the the widgets one at a time until you find the one that cranks up the fan again and just avoid that.

+EDIT: More specifically, it seems to be the weather widgets. I had "Weather" and "Radar in Motion" running. Turning them on caused the fans to spin up slowly. Turning them back off brought the fans down. I'd guess it is something having to do with the fact that they update constantly, although there were no problems under 10.5.5.+

Message edited by: Wayne Crannell