MBP overheating and I have to restart multiple times a day

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Level 1

4 points

MBP overheating and I have to restart multiple times a day

Hi,

My MBP is overheating, slowing to a crawl, and I have to restart multiple times a day (which may or may not help the issue).

Machine is:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013)

2.4 GHz, Intel Core i5

4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Not expandable RAM (which is beyond me why they would make a machine non-expandable. I found out after I bought it).

During the day I'm running:

Mail app (with a very full inbox -- could this be a contributing factor? I can archive the saved emails)

Safari (with various tabs open, sometimes many sometimes just a few)

Messages

Evernote

Chrome (with various tabs open, sometimes many sometimes just a few)

... and occasionally, but not always:

Preview

Numbers

I'm not gaming. I'm not streaming video. After a few hours of use, many times a day (often 2-4 times just in an afternoon) the machine slows to a crawl and I restart, which may or may not solve the speed and heat issue.

I've run the utility Activity Monitor, and there are applications I don't recognize sometimes using 11 - 18% CPU (bird and soangent). Anyone know what these are?

Thanks for any ideas. I bought this MBP last June. It was from the refurb outlet, where I've gotten all of my Macs over the past 10 years or so. This is the worst of them yet.

Thanks.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), OS X El Capitan (10.11.4)

Posted on Apr 20, 2016 6:21 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

John Galt

Level 10

141,150 points

Apr 20, 2016 4:46 PM in response to 1Badger13

bird and soagent are normal Apple processes. bird is one of the processes used with iCloud document synchronization. soagent is used in conjunction with Messages. Under normal circumstances neither one will require an inordinate amount of CPU time. If you are using Messages with a Google or other non-Apple account (in other words, not exclusively iCloud) then poor performance might be correlated with those accounts.

In any event 11 to 18% seems a bit much to me though. Try uninstalling Evernote as well as any and all Google products. Either one might conceivably conflict with Apple's social push agent and / or document synchronization processes. Google is either disinterested or unable to implement efficient OS X apps.

Try deleting any non-Apple Messages accounts, as well as completely eradicating Google from your Mac. You can always re-install it and Evernote again, after troubleshooting. Your Google and Evernote data are stored on their servers. Back up your Mac anyway, as a precaution.

Mail app (with a very full inbox -- could this be a contributing factor? I can archive the saved emails)

Perhaps. "Very full" is relative. Some people retain tens or even hundreds of thousands of email messages. Whatever Mail's practical limits are, I wouldn't know.

4 GB is perfectly adequate to run El Cap on a Retina MBP. It would be premature to suspect any hardware inadequacies, but Google products will burden even a brand new Mac, regardless of its configuration.

Run Apple Hardware Test to confirm your MBP's exhaust fan is operating normally. Apple Hardware Test is for Macs produced prior to June, 2013. Later Macs use Apple Diagnostics.

Also read Mac notebooks: Operating temperature - Apple Support and Learn about the fans in your Mac - Apple Support.

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Answer 2

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Apr 20, 2016 4:47 PM in response to 1Badger13

Please sign out of iCloud in its preference pane and see whether there's any change. No data will be removed from the servers, and you can retrieve it by signing back in. That said, you should always have a current archiveof the data for safety's sake, even if you don't sign out.

If you use iCloud Keychain, when you sign back in to iCloud follow one of the procedures described in this support article to set it up on an additional device.

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