Excessively loud whirring noise, even when in Sleep Mode!

Question

Excessively loud whirring noise, even when in Sleep Mode!

Hi. I've had my MacBook Pro for a month now, and while I love everything Apple, I'm really worried about the noises it makes. Sometimes its starts making a really loud whirring noise (I'm no expert but I'm guessing its either the superdrive or the cooling device, I don't think MacBook Pro's have fans). It got really bad two days ago - the computer was in Sleep Mode and I heard it from inside my bag which was at the floor next to my desk. I thought the hard drive was off during Sleep, so what could this have been? When I took the computer out the noise was so loud that other students were turning around to look - and it was really hot. It sounded like it was about to take off. Is this normal? Its only a few weeks old! My girlfriend also has a MBP and she says hers hardly ever makes a noise...

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.9), 15" 2.33 GHz Intel Duo Core 2

Posted on May 14, 2007 11:23 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Frostine

Level 3

675 points

May 14, 2007 11:32 AM in response to Will Armstrong

Your fans were on, working very hard to cool down your computer which should have been shut down, not put to sleep, before being placed into a carrying case.

The computer continues to generate heat while in sleep mode, and if it is enclosed in a carrying case has absolutly no way to cool down. Instead, the case acts as insulation and the computer grows hotter and hotter.

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Answer 2

jayv.

Level 4

1,303 points

May 14, 2007 11:36 AM in response to Will Armstrong

Hi Will,

Actually the MBP's have 2 fans, one left and one right, the sound you are describing sounds like a fan issue.
Boot from the osX dvd holding the "d" key to run a hardware test, if the test doesn't show anything wrong take it in to a mac store and have them check it out, your MBP is still covered by warranty so they should replace the fan if that turns out to be the problem.
I do suggest (always) to make backups of your data just in case.
Good luck.

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Answer 3

Martintek

Level 3

710 points

May 14, 2007 2:07 PM in response to Will Armstrong

I have read warning notices in regard to your exact situation. People opening their laptop and finding the computer on, hot and the battery drained.

MacBook Pro's have a feature called SafeSleep. It is similar to Hibernate in Windows. You should not move the MBP until the light on the front is blinking on and off after you close the lid. The MBP is still writing to the hard drive up until the time that blinking starts. (The manual for the MBP does worn that moving the machine while it is still writing to the drive can cause the hard drive to fail, by the way.)

Try to make it a policy to shut down all applications before closing the lid. The more applications you have running, the larger the backup file written to the hard drive.

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Answer 4

jayv.

Level 4

1,303 points

May 14, 2007 1:12 PM in response to Will Armstrong

Your computer is safe in sleep mode when traveling with it, this is... if it STAYS in sleep mode. See if you can find out what caused your comp to wake up.
Could be an ical alarm or other alarm app ?

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Answer 5

May 23, 2007 7:51 AM in response to Will Armstrong

No, nothing should run in sleep mode. Only the DRAM gets power. The fans should shut off immediately once the machine goes to sleep.

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Answer 6

May 14, 2007 4:14 PM in response to Martintek

Thanks for all your posts. The strange thing is that the computer was still in Sleep Mode when the fan was going all crazy. It wasn't on. It was heating up and being really noisy, and yeah the battery was getting drained, but it only snapped out of Sleep Mode when I hit space (the I heard that zip zip sound, which is the hard disk waking up right?) Really appreciate all the comments but I'm still a little confused, as you all assume the computer had turned on.

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Answer 7

May 14, 2007 11:37 AM in response to Frostine

Thanks. So the hard drive and everything else continue to run while in Sleep Mode? Might I have done damage to the computer already by using Sleep Mode instead of Shut Down?

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Answer 8

Sep 15, 2008 4:54 PM in response to Will Armstrong

Not a problem anymore, thanks for the responses.

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