MACBOOK PRO & SNOW LEOPARD - OVERHEATING

Further to my earlier post, I've now contacted Apple to ask for feedback on this issue, and asked them to recognise that there is clearly a problem with Snow Leopard and some configurations that does need to be addressed.

I'll be surprised if I hear from them, and even more surprised if they acknowledge the problem and commit to fixing it.

Personally, for all its benefits, Snow Leopard has been a massive waste of time for me. The cost of the upgrade isn't the issue, it's the sheer amount of time and frustration attached to the upgrade.

The other issue is how much running Snow Leopard for extended periods of time with high temperatures and fans maxed will affect the lifespan of my computer. Not a chance I'm prepared to take given the cost of my computer.

I hope that Apple do address the issue, and I hope this doesn't turn into one of those issues that comes back to bite them in the arse.

As an aside, for all those that can, I'd recommend going back to Leopard. I've had not one single problem with overheating, noisy fans or shortened battery life since I did.

This is a lesson learned for me, one that i thought I'd left behind when I dumped Windows. Hey ho.

Grahame Fendle wrote:
As an aside, for all those that can, I'd recommend going back to Leopard. I've had not one single problem with overheating, noisy fans or shortened battery life since I did.

This is a lesson learned for me, one that i thought I'd left behind when I dumped Windows. Hey ho.

Same for me. Since I downgraded to Leopard I didn't have any problems. Having said this: I would have preferred not to be forced to go through all the hassle (backup, recover etc.) in the first place. I started to like osx because "it just worked" and I could concentrate on my work instead of my computer configuration... very dissapointed...

Before Apple came out with the firmware updates for the intel Macbook, Snow Leopard was running pretty smoothly. Even my previous issue of temps and fans running on Flash sites were resolved. Normal temps and fans at 2000 RPMs.

Now my MB is getting seriously too hot. I've checked the Activity Monitor, reset SMC, PRAM, installed latest version of Flash, etc.

Not sure why this is happening again.

In Activity Monitor, Quick Look Helper is #1 in virtual memory. What is this?

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed this seemed to get a lot more prevalent after the firmware update. It had happened to me on occasion before, but since applying the update it seems to return within days, sometimes less. A warm restart still clears it temporarily for me, but nothing else has worked. One thing I have noticed: It seems to hit upon coming out of sleep. Just, one particular wakeup, Speedstep decides it doesn't want to work anymore, and will just stay in full-power mode all the time. And it stays that way until you reboot. To be honest, I am starting to consider going back to Leopard for the first time since I upgraded to SL (12:15 in the morning on August 29th)

I have a 15.4" mid 2007 Macbook Pro that came with Tiger. Last year I switched to Leopard and in the first week of November this year I switched to Snow Leopard. At the time I thought my notebook was running hotter than normal and had reduced battery life, but I didn't pay much heed. Within a week of switching to Snow Leopard I had a problem with my nVidia graphics chip. My display went dead due to a bad graphics card. Apple very kindly agreed to give me a free replacement logic board (this is a common nVidia part failure it seems).

Once my notebook was repaired and returned to me I was certain that it was running noticeably hotter than it used to before I switched to Snow Leopard. I was quite concerned by the heat being generated by the notebook so I began monitoring it through iStat. My CPU and GPU were almost always at around 70-75 deg C, with virtually nothing running (maybe Firefox). Then I realised that my battery life had also gone to ****. Granted my battery was over two years old, but it only had 450 cycles on it and it had decent battery life in Leopard.

I was very concerned that the added heat would cause a repeat failure of some component or the other, so I ordered a new battery. Today I installed the new battery and I am still getting about an hour less than I originally used to get on Tiger or Leopard out of my new battery. My fans still spin to around 6,000 rpm every now and then and my machine is still running hot.

This problem is definitely linked to Snow Leopard. I think I may go back to Leopard, because I am very concerned that this constant overheating will cause something else to fail and I don't really want to buy a new notebook in the next couple of months.

AAAARGH!...

Looks like my bootable backup of Leopard is corrupt!! I really want to get rid of Snow Leopard though.

Totally ****** off with this temperature issue and Apples lack of feedback on a very serious issue.

How can I revert back to an old operating system without having to manually install each and every application again from scratch?


Any ideas?....

After I left my computer to the service center, they cleaned it from dust and found no problems. They believed it was the dust that could have caused the overheating. My Macbook Pro soon started heating again, so I did a clean install as Apple support recommended. The heating was now gone! yey...

Well, soon another problem started. The fan started making a funny noise each time I opened my laptop. Lasting for about 30-60 minutes each time. It sounded as it was dust in it, but I knew that just recently been cleaned, I've even got the before - after pictures.

So, I returned it once again. Apple was nice here, cause my guarentee was out and they extended it, cause I left my laptop in on the last day. They now called and told me the logic card was broken and two fans. My iSight also got screwed because of the logic card. Now they are fixing that.

Guess I'm in luck? This would have cost a lot...

Okay, here's an interesting take on this for those who have the time and inclination.

With some time on my hands, and clearly if you don't have loads of spare time there's no point in going through this exercise, I decided to have another go at this.

I backed up everything using CCC so that I had a bootable and easily restorable backup of Leopard 10.5.8, then set about doing a clean install of Snow Leopard (SL). Bear in mind this is not the first time I've done a clean install, but I wanted to give it one last chance.

Booted from the SL DVD and wiped the original partition, then did a clean install. I installed only everything I needed, which in my case was: nearby printers; English only; Quicktime 7.

Soon as the machine finished the install and booted into SL, I shut it down. I didn't touch any preferences or open any applications. Once the machine shut down, I did a PRAM and a SMC reset (1).

With that done I booted into SL and installed iWork and iLife, then began the process of running software update until everything was up to date. I would normally update from local downloads, but just this once decided to let Software Update handle everything.

Cool, cool, cool computer. Just to make sure, I ran YouTube in one tab, BBC iPlayer in another, and another video from a NSFW site in another. The last of the three sites has always caused problems with overheating. No such problems this time.

Ran activity monitor for a while, and noticed that even when I'd closed all the Flash video windows Flash Player (Safari Internet Plug-In), which runs as a separate (32bit) process under SL, was still running and using around 15-20% CPU. Went to the Flash Player download site and ran the version checker, noticed I was a couple of small versions behind, so update. Rebooted, just so I could run the same tests relatively clean.

Same results, machine running very, very cool. No screaming fans, no hot to touch MacBook. Here's the best part: with the latest Flash Player, when you close the last tab that had a Flash Video running, the player immediately drops the CPU, then a minute or so later it dies.

So, thus far, happy with the way SL is running here. I wouldn't recommend my methods to anyone because there's very little consistency in the way this is being reported by people and the symptoms they're reporting are variable. However, if you're bored and have the time and the kit to do it, it's only going to cost you half a day.

One final observation regarding heat on my machine. Occasionally, and I can't for the life of me imagine why or how I managed to check this, but despite my LED being green, checking the battery status tells me that I'm 99% charged, and it stays there. The fix for me is always to unplug for half an hour and plug back in, then it always recharges to 100% and the heat goes away. However, this is much less of an issue for me since I went through the somewhat convoluted process above.

If anyone can be arsed to go through the above, then I'd be interested to hear about your experiences. Perhaps even the latest Flash Player will work for you.

There is, however, still one problem: battery life is still reduced in SL, and I believe it's to do with the Flash Player running as a separate process, but the latest version has definitely improved things for me.

I never did hear back from Apple after sending them two letters, and nor do I expect to, so the next time I ask a question in these forums and one of the wags who have a nasty habit of simply posting a feedback link as a reply, they're going to cop for it.

Writing to Apple about what is clearly a serious problem for some people is pointless and it'll serve them right if this issue ends up somewhere like The Register, because it's like barking at the moon.

An acknowledgement would be nice, a commitment to track it down and fix it would be better, sheer bloody-minded ignorance isn't acceptable.

(1) I noticed something interesting when I went through this process: the instructions for doing an SMC reset were changed just over two weeks ago. When I originally checked them, there was an option there to use a keyboard combination for late 2008 MacBooks. That option has now been removed from the KB article and replaced with the original, unplug, battery-out, power on for five seconds instructions. Whether that's made a difference or not, I don't know. Whatever, everything seems to be working fine for me at the moment.

OK, so here's an observation I've made. The past few weeks I've had issues with Firefox randomly crashing. This never used to happen before, but lately it's been happening maybe once or twice a week, which is more than I can tolerate. So I stopped using Firefox and started using Safari.

I've noticed that not only has the battery life dramatically improved, but the Macbook Pro is also running much, much cooler. Could there be a link between the browser being used and this issue? I've got a couple of tabs open (nothing crazy), including some flash / java sites.

Can anyone else please verify that this problem is related to choice of browser?

It's funny how I thought the overheating was only related to the first generation Core Duo processor. I have both a 2006 Mac Mini and 2006 MacBook both running the same 1.83 Ghz Core Duo processors. Both of them experienced the same "freezing" and "hanging" after installing Snow Leopard, with the SMC fans blaring on both.

I was about to sell my MB after trying almost everything (new ram, new hard drive, SMC and PRAM resets, reinstalls and firmware updates, etc) when I decided to open up my MB and unplug the SMC controller...at that moment with the unit unplugged and battery removed I also performed an SMC reset (holding down the power for 5-10 seconds) I reattached the controller and put the battery back in. I rebooted the MB and it's been running ever since...as of this post I've been running the MB for 2 days without a hitch.

The CPU still gets very warm when watching flash videos and websites, but it hasn't froze...yet.

I'll keep everyone informed if this little trick did the job...

I wanna add my name to the list as well - I noticed since installing SL my laptop runs 100% CPU usu=age when I come across any form of website involving flash in Safari. I

've also noticed the shorter battery life and my CPU running at around 69 degrees celsius (and thats in IDLE!!!!) with my fans running between 2000-6000 rpm. Apple release a firmware update or something and fix this!!!

Hi Wayne, I'm tempted to try the same thing, where exactly is the SMC to unplug it? I replaced my top case a couple of months ago so I'm not scared about removing a ton of screws to try this but I'm clueless as to where it would be and google isn't telling me. The regular smc reset does nothing for me.

Well - since I cant go back to 10.5 I had to try SOMETHING to get the temperature down.

Had a look at Coolbook a while back but didn't want to start changing voltages - eventually I did it and SUCCESS!!

Stressing the CPU at 100% for 13 minutes with the fans running as slow as possible ( 2000rpm) the maximum temperature I can achieve is *GPU 78°C* and *CPU 62°C*

With the fans running flat out ( 6000rpm) the maximum temperature I can achieve is *GPU 59°C* and *CPU 46°C*

So now at idle the temperature sits around *GPU 56°C* and *CPU 41°C*

Almost back to what I used to get prior to CRAPPY 10.6!!!!

I can not believe that this has not been sorted by now. Even acknowledged. First posts in September.

Can't find a mention of 10.6.3 fixing this and debating whether to wait and see or revert back to Leopard and not looking forward to the work involved in the latter option.

I upgraded this week after initially being fearful of snow leopard teething problems. Right from the start it has felt considerably hotter. Temp in the 70's C when barely doing anything.

Not happy about this at all. Was working fine before upgrade, always cool and rarely heard fan unless doing something intensive. Wish I hadn't bothered now. The good points initially had me excited, now I'm just worried I'm gonna damage my machine.

EDIT: That would be 70 degrees farenheit.

Just tried the SMC reset and so far the temp seems to have dropped to 50-55. That would seem about right so I'll wait and see, although I'm sure the fan is still more active than it used to be- probably reacting to the heat better since the reset. A helpful guy I spoke to in Apple Care wasn't aware of it being an issue and made a point of flagging it up, for what it's worth.