Periodically my Macbook will have the fan turn on, at a very high speed, for no reason (all I will be running is Safari, or some other small program). I took my computer to the Genius bar, and they told me that they couldn't find any problems, but when it happens I should look at the Activity Monitor and find out what is using most of my CPU (and make special note of things with PowerPC next to them). When it happened today, I saw that for almost half an hour SymAutoProtect was using over 90% of my CPU. I searched for the file/program, and I even tried to quit it in Activity Monitor, but I couldn't get it to stop. I cannot find this file anywhere. Can anyone help me get rid of this? Thank you!
do you by chance have any Norton antivirus software installed? this sounds like a part of some Norton program. do yourself a BIG favor and uninstall Norton completely. it's worse then any virus it supposed to protect you from, especially given the fact that there are currently no mac viruses out there.
No, I actually uninstalled all of my Norton/Symantec stuff a while ago when I heard that it caused all sorts of issues. I searched for Norton, Symantec, and SymAutoProtect in Finder and I can't find any of them.
this means you didn't uninstall it completely. I googled it up and this is definitely part of Norton. that's part of the problem with Norton. it causes problems and is very hard to get rid of. did you use Norton uninstaller?
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/num.nsf/docid/2002110814042611
also, look in /Library/StartupItems. anything symantec related?
Thanks for your help! I still couldn't find any reference of them, but it no longer shows up in my Activity Monitor, and the uninstaller deleted alot of stuff that supposedly did not exist. Thanks!
I have the same problem, the SymAutoProtect process is at about 90% of the CPU and the fan is working overtime... My problem is that I can't just install Norton Antivirus as it's a requirement at my company to use it. Any suggestion what to do?