This is not really a "beginner" question, except that it is the first time I have faced this particular set of problems. I've been a Mac user since the mid-80s of the last century. I'm currently using a MacBook, and for two years it has run flawlessly. Recently, for no obvious reason, it has acted as if it is "running hot", the fan cycling on and off constantly, and often staying on at high speed for long periods. I am not running any highly demanding software or applications--in fact not doing anything different than previously, when this didn't happen. When checking out web chatter about this, a number of people mentioned looking into one's Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder, because it helped them to identify applications that were running without the user being aware of it. For the first time in my life I opened up Activity Monitor, and I have no idea what I am looking at. I mean I see that there are various graphic representations of CPU use, Memory availability, etc. But there are endless things I don't get--thread and process id #s, a host of users who are not me, process names that are meaningless to me [kextd, kdcmond, etc.]. Is there somewhere I can go to get all this explained to me? And suppose I understood it, how would it help me to identify some stealth application that was running without my knowing it.
Thanks for any help.
JGL
Thanks for any help.
JGL