MacBook Late 2009 Overheating and Trackpad

Question

MacBook Late 2009 Overheating and Trackpad

Hey guys,

I've had a rather nasty problem for the past week; two problems, actually. My cursor is "going haywire". That is: jumping around, not moving when I use the trackpad, acting as if there's more than one input down (e.g. scrolling when I'm only using one finger, expose when I'm only using two, etc.)

The second issue is that the computer is heating up far too fast to be normal. Currently the temp is ~55C when only running Safari with two tabs open. When I open any other programs, the fan's RPM speeds up considerably, averaging approximately 3000-4000 RPMS when running Safari, iTunes, Skype, and Adium, for example. The temperature around that point is approximately 60C. When I run something larger such as a game, the temperature averages 72C (I know games obviously make the computer run hotter, but this seems a little excessive.)

Up until now, I had assumed the two issues were connected, but this morning my cursor is still more or less completely out of my control (It's taken a good 15 minutes to navigate to this page), and my computer's temperature is only 56C with fan speed of 2000RPM.

Notes:

-I HAVE cleaned the trackpad, cleared SMC, Reset P-RAM

-This has happened for Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion, so it's not an OS issue

-I've cleaned out the fan and heat escape by the lid of the computer

Specs:

Late 2009 White MacBook, 13"

OS X 10.8

2.26GHz Core2Duo

2GB DDR RAM

Posted on Aug 8, 2012 8:13 AM

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Answer 1

BGreg

Level 6

17,552 points

Aug 8, 2012 10:38 AM in response to superblindguy

If you look at your activity monitor (on your hard drive in applications/utilities) and look at the system memory tab, what does it say for page ins and out? If page outs is 10% to 15%, or more, of page ins, you don't have enough memory for the programs you run. A page out happens when another program needs physical memory to run, so OS X writes part of memory to disk. Too much of this can impact performance. If coupled with other issues this could contribute to heat.

Have you watched the activity monitor to see what's actually running on the system? Are there any processes loaded as login items that are consuming the CPU, which aren't needed? If so, delete that login item. You find them in System Preferences in the User tab under your ID.

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Answer 2

Aug 8, 2012 1:32 PM in response to superblindguy

If you don't have enough RAM then you should upgrade it. Don't buy it from apple because their pricing is outrageous. Run a google search on what kind of ram to buy for your computer. Then browse amazon for a ram set with good reviews and that meets your system. Keep in mind that you can't buy too much ram because apple computers only support a fixed amount.

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