Can A Hot CPU Cause System Freezes?

Hello all,

I'm just curious if it's possible that a hot CPU may be the cause of repetitive "spinning wait cursors"... Judging from these past two weeks, that seems to be the correlation that I have drawn.

Is 50C too hot for a Macbook to operate under?

Yes, it's possible for overheating to cause all kinds of strange behaviors. If you're talking about 50*C at the CPU, that's pretty cool for a Macbook and should present no problems.

kjkim323 said:

Hello all,

I'm just curious if it's possible that a hot CPU may be the cause of repetitive "spinning wait cursors"... Judging from these past two weeks, that seems to be the correlation that I have drawn.

Is 50C too hot for a Macbook to operate under?

Click to expand...

I like your use of the word correlation, which is exactly right. Correlation isn't the same as causation though. There may be something that is causing the CPU to heat up and a spinning cursor.

50c is not really that hot, in fact my CPU is 60c right now and my fans are running at 3000rpm (because I have MS word under rosetta and parallels coherence on at the moment). The Core Duo should be happy up to around 80 degrees and even hotter (although your lap might not be).

Install the iStat Pro widget and next time things get stuck, a quick F12 should reveal what process is hanging by how much CPU is being used. Or just look at your activity monitor.

I suspect that something is grabbing a lot of memory and your HDD is swapping a lot.

Agree with Zoolook - get the widget and check for which process is slowing down - and how much memory do you have in the system?

50c is about right when at idle - have run mine for hours at a time in the range of 68+

A system freeze due to heat from either the processor or the video card would not give you a spinning anything - typically, the whole system would freeze on you and leave you with no option but to press the power button.

Hmm...

I'm running a Core 2 Duo with 2gb RAM and a 120gb hdd. It's driving me near the point of insanity; I've actually done two clean reinstalls, but the problem persists. I have a Windows partition, but interestingly, it runs immaculately.

I agree that 50C is not hot at all, but that seems to be the threshold at which my Macbook starts going crazy. Sometimes the spinning cursor doesn't disappear after a substantial amount of time, so I am forced to do a manual shutdown (force quit and Finder, as well as the Dock freeze in such cases).

I haven't done a complete clean reinstall in the sense that I haven't deleted the Windows partition. I'm a bit wary of doing that, but if it's a probable cause, then I am willing.

Thanks for your help!

Oh, Disk Utility and Hardware Diagnostics don't reveal anytime... Neither does the Activity Monitor (no program chewing up incredible amounts of memory).

If your cpu overheats to a level that will cause damage, the system does not freeze. It shuts down completely - as if the power cord was yanked out. At least, that's what I've seen before.

giulio said:

If your cpu overheats to a level that will cause damage, the system does not freeze. It shuts down completely - as if the power cord was yanked out. At least, that's what I've seen before.

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Agreed.

kjkim323 said:

Oh, Disk Utility and Hardware Diagnostics don't reveal anytime... Neither does the Activity Monitor (no program chewing up incredible amounts of memory).

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If Windows is not having an issue, it makes it less likely to be a hardware issue anyway, unless there is hardware in the machine that Windows ignores.

Can you stress the machine in windows to see if it crashes? Run a benchmark or something, like SiSoft Sandra or 3DMark01.

It could possibly be your OS X install discs are no good and a file is not installing correctly.

Zoolook said:

Can you stress the machine in windows to see if it crashes? Run a benchmark or something, like SiSoft Sandra or 3DMark01.

It could possibly be your OS X install discs are no good and a file is not installing correctly.

Click to expand...

I will try that today and return with results, but in the meantime, some notes about my experience with Windows on this machine:

I installed Windows for one reason and one reason alone, video games. Granted, I'm not a heavy gamer, but I would assume that the games that I play (Halo, Counter-Strike...) are far more system intensive than running Firefox, Mail, iChat, and iTunes.

Could faulty RAM be the culprit? The hardware check did not notice anything... And if the install discs are bad, does Apple replace them for free?

Thank you guys so much for your help.

kjkim323 said:

I will try that today and return with results, but in the meantime, some notes about my experience with Windows on this machine:

I installed Windows for one reason and one reason alone, video games. Granted, I'm not a heavy gamer, but I would assume that the games that I play (Halo, Counter-Strike...) are far more system intensive than running Firefox, Mail, iChat, and iTunes.

Could faulty RAM be the culprit? The hardware check did not notice anything... And if the install discs are bad, does Apple replace them for free?

Thank you guys so much for your help.

Click to expand...

I would not rule anything out, but if a RAM module was faulty, either it simply would not register with the system, or it'd cause a system crash as soon as it was accessed. OS X is likely to grab the RAM before Windows, as it makes better use of free memory.

Exactly what system is it, specs and RAM?

They way I did it on a PC... is to improperly seat the CPU's heat sink with that heat gel. After a few crashes (while running 3d visualizers in winamp) I took the CPU out and saw that nearly 1/4 of it was melted away. Reminded me of a cracked engine block where coolant leaks into the cylinder.

The problem may also be hard drive related. If the OS can't get required data from the disk, it will certainly beachball until the data becomes avail.

So try running MenuMeters - turn on all the gadgets to see what's going on when the freeze happens. CPU pinned? Heavy HDD access? Ram full? Network saturated?

Zoolook said:

Agreed.



If Windows is not having an issue, it makes it less likely to be a hardware issue anyway, unless there is hardware in the machine that Windows ignores.

Can you stress the machine in windows to see if it crashes? Run a benchmark or something, like SiSoft Sandra or 3DMark01.

It could possibly be your OS X install discs are no good and a file is not installing correctly.

Click to expand...

Zoolook said:

I would not rule anything out, but if a RAM module was faulty, either it simply would not register with the system, or it'd cause a system crash as soon as it was accessed. OS X is likely to grab the RAM before Windows, as it makes better use of free memory.

Exactly what system is it, specs and RAM?

Click to expand...

Macbook Intel Core2 Duo 2.16ghz, 1gb RAM, 120gb hdd. Running all the latest software updates, such as Mac OS X 10.4.10, latest iTunes, etc... Bought it July 17th (ironic that that is the iCal date glitch, isn't it?).

giulio said:

They way I did it on a PC... is to improperly seat the CPU's heat sink with that heat gel. After a few crashes (while running 3d visualizers in winamp) I took the CPU out and saw that nearly 1/4 of it was melted away. Reminded me of a cracked engine block where coolant leaks into the cylinder.

The problem may also be hard drive related. If the OS can't get required data from the disk, it will certainly beachball until the data becomes avail.

So try running MenuMeters - turn on all the gadgets to see what's going on when the freeze happens. CPU pinned? Heavy HDD access? Ram full? Network saturated?

Click to expand...

Whenever the beachball shows, I pull up iStatPro widget, but it doesn't update any information during the freeze (all I get is the info BEFORE the freeze); and nothing appears to be wrong before it freezes.

kjkim323 said:

Whenever the beachball shows, I pull up iStatPro widget, but it doesn't update any information during the freeze (all I get is the info BEFORE the freeze); and nothing appears to be wrong before it freezes.

Click to expand...

MenuMeters constantly runs in the menu bar. It will show you a few minutes history (like a graph/ticker). So you can see what happened just before (and leading up to) the freeze. And if you're lucky, MM will continue to operate even while the rest of the system beachballs.

I ran the 3Dmark2001 test, and Windows gave me no problems whatsoever. I've played games on my Windows partition for hours straight with no issues as well...

I've installed MenuMeter, so I'll post something if anything suspicious comes up, but Mac OS X hasn't frozen in some time (it happens seemingly random nowadays...).

Okay, my laptop started exhibiting some odd symptoms that may be compeling evidence that this is a HDD issue...

I wrote my previous post while in my Windows partition (after I had run the 3dmarks benchmark). After restarting so that I could boot into Mac OS X, the harddisk making that loud spinning noise, and the Apple logo wouldn't show up. So I did a manual restart, and this time it showed up after a long period of time, followed by another long period of time (with the spinning load animation), followed by another long period of time (with the NO symbol, you know the O with the line through it, and a spinning load animation). So I did another manual restart, this time holding down alt to see if I could boot Mac OS X from the BootCamp menu, and neither of my partitions showed up. So another manual restart, and the apple symbol showed with the spinning wait cursor, and I waited and waited and waited, and it finally booted Mac OS X. But the spinning beachball of doom ensued, and I couldn't even start Firefox. Manual reboot, booted into Windows, and here I am.

Could a poorly placed Windows partition be the culprit? Or just a damaged HDD?

kjkim323 said:

Could a poorly placed Windows partition be the culprit? Or just a damaged HDD?

Click to expand...

Ooookey doookey

So you have a single physical drive? 2 Operating systems and one works fine and the other after 3 installations has issues.

I think you need a low level disk checker to run through the HDD to check for physical faults.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/HDD-Scan.shtml

It sounds as though the boot partition has some issues. I don't really know how Bootcamp works and whether it uses the boot partition only when OS X starts or for both. I'd imagine both.

My best guess is there is physical damage to the drive, but the Windows partition is not affected. I think this is exceptionally rare, but not impossible.

I'll try that...

So would a bad hdd be our best guess here?

kjkim323 said:

I'll try that...

So would a bad hdd be our best guess here?

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Yes. It occurred to me though that the software I pointed you to may only check the Windows partition.

Yes, I think that that is the case, but I'm not entirely sure.

It needs to be run outside of Windows/Mac OS X, right? Jeez, that sounds like a stupid question, but the program runs from within Windows so I had to raise a brow...

kjkim323 said:

Yes, I think that that is the case, but I'm not entirely sure.

It needs to be run outside of Windows/Mac OS X, right? Jeez, that sounds like a stupid question, but the program runs from within Windows so I had to raise a brow...

Click to expand...

There should be a diagnostic programme on the OS X disc, which you can boot from.

http://macs.about.com/cs/onlinecourses/a/tsclassic03.htm

although this doesn't tell you HOW to boot from a CD... half job idiots...

This does though

http://www.jacsoft.co.nz/Mac_Keys.htm

Just hold C whilst booting apparently. Easy eh?

Anyway, this can check your HDD for hardware faults.