Overheating and Quick Battery Discharge

[gloriapattismyt]

My MacBook Pro is a 2009 and until a few months ago has worked perfectly. I purchased a battery in December 2013 with a year warranty. I noticed that by the time I read the news and reports in the mornings (about 2 hours) my battery is nearly dead. The Mac genius tested the battery and the power charger in July and said they are both fine. He suggested turning the illumination waaay down. I have done this and the result is the same. Also, it has started getting too warm on the bottom. Any ideas? Is my hard drive getting ready to croak? Thank you.

 

[RadDave]

My MacBook Pro is a 2009 and until a few months ago has worked perfectly. I purchased a battery in December 2013 with a year warranty. I noticed that by the time I read the news and reports in the mornings (about 2 hours) my battery is nearly dead. The Mac genius tested the battery and the power charger in July and said they are both fine. He suggested turning the illumination waaay down. I have done this and the result is the same. Also, it has started getting too warm on the bottom. Any ideas? Is my hard drive getting ready to croak? Thank you.

Hi Gloria....... - I'm not going to try to answer your question now, but suggest some clarification first for others to be more specific in responding: 1) You mention overheating in your subject title but then do not describe 'how' you came to this conclusion, i.e. is the computing becoming 'hot' and how do you know; and 2) Is this a new battery or a refurb and was the correct battery used for your model/year computer? May just help others in their comments - Dave

 

[pigoo3]

The computer running warm...and short battery life says one thing to me...something is open & running that is using a bunch of computer resources.

Do this:

- Quit all open programs.
- Open up "Activity Monitor".
- Select "All Process's" from the top of the window.
- Now look thru the list (the % CPU column)...and take note of anything that is taking up a lot of computer resources.

I could be wrong...but it's somewhere to start.

- Nick

 

[gloriapattismyt]

RadDave: I know it's getting too warm because it nearly burns my left leg (lap). New battery from Apple store, so it better be the right one.
pigoo 3: That's what I thought, too, but when I suggested that to the Mac genius, he said Nah, that's not it. I'm going to follow your suggestion and check anyway.

 

[pigoo3]

pigoo 3: That's what I thought, too, but when I suggested that to the Mac genius, he said Nah, that's not it. I'm going to follow your suggestion and check anyway.

All we can do is check just to verify. It's a quick check...so no harm done. If the Activity Monitor check comes up with nothing...then we have to consider something else.

- Nick

 

[RadDave]

RadDave: I know it's getting too warm because it nearly burns my left leg (lap). New battery from Apple store, so it better be the right one.
pigoo 3: That's what I thought, too, but when I suggested that to the Mac genius, he said Nah, that's not it. I'm going to follow your suggestion and check anyway.

Hi again - well, follow Nick's usual excellent advice and let us know - I'm assuming that HEAT on your leg was not an issue previously? Also, are you doing any activities different from your pre-battery change? For example, I use iStat Menus that provide internal computer temperatures and when I'm on the 'Sunday Chat' here, my temps go to 140 F+ and indeed my leg gets hot! Dave

 

[gloriapattismyt]

Hmmm... well I didn't see anything significant in the Activity Monitor. Yes, the heat thing seems to coincide with the excessive memory usage. I have the screen turned down on low light and the keyboard light off when I'm just reading. I'd be grateful for more ideas for things to try.

 

[RadDave]

Hmmm... well I didn't see anything significant in the Activity Monitor. Yes, the heat thing seems to coincide with the excessive memory usage. I have the screen turned down on low light and the keyboard light off when I'm just reading. I'd be grateful for more ideas for things to try.

Well, you'll have to tell us what activities coincide w/ the excessive usage - you could also install iStats (as to my previous link) to see what might be increasing your temps; but still bothersome that a 'new' Apple compatible battery should give you only a couple of hours of use - confusing? Dave

 

[pigoo3]

Hmmm... well I didn't see anything significant in the Activity Monitor. Yes, the heat thing seems to coincide with the excessive memory usage. I have the screen turned down on low light and the keyboard light off when I'm just reading. I'd be grateful for more ideas for things to try.

I was really hoping you would have spotted something…I hope nothing was missed. Usually when a lot of heat is being generated…there's some serious cpu activity going on.

If there's nothing significant in Activity Monitor when you checked…maybe the normal activities you do on the computer…aren't as "normal" or low-resource as you may think.

- Maybe you have a lot of apps open at the same time.
- Maybe you have a lot of web pages/tabs open at the same time in your web browser.
- Or both.

For example…if you have Safari open + a whole lot of tabs (other web pages)…and you're just viewing one web page….all those other web page tabs can still be doing things…eating up cpu resources.

- Nick

 

[gloriapattismyt]

Nick: No, really. All I do is read the newspaper and look at some other reports when the battery is quickly draining. I don't use Safari; I use Firefox, and I may have two tabs open, tops. In fact, I don't do much with that computer at all except browse the web. I listen to Internet radio at night, but I keep it plugged in when I do that. I do all my other work on my iMac. Sometimes I shut the MacBook down, just to make sure nothing's running that I don't see.
Re the activity monitor: With all apps closed, the %CPU on all processes is 0.0, except hidd, kernel_task, disnoted, and Windowserver, all of which are very low numbers.

 

[pigoo3]

Re the activity monitor: With all apps closed, the %CPU on all processes is 0.0, except hidd, kernel_task, disnoted, and Windowserver, all of which are very low numbers.

Ok…no problem. Just want to check on one more thing. In the same Activity Monitor window…towards the center bottom area there are some tabs. Click on the "CPU" tab…what are the values there (% User, % System, % Idle)?

Try this both ways (no apps launched…and your normal apps launched). Maybe you don't get anything unusual right away (maybe you do). If not…keep your eye on these values…and see if they change when you start to notice the computer getting very warm…and/or the battery draining quickly. This may not be a short test…you may have to watch things for a while before coming to a definite conclusion.

Also…can you hear your computers fans? Do they seem loud? If you're not doing much on the computer…it should be virtually silent.

Just trying to throw some ideas your way.

- Nick

 

[gloriapattismyt]

Update: No Help Available

OK, so after I took the MBP to the Mac store for the third time, they finally decided to send it to the repair facility where, upon closer inspection, they found no reason for the excessive battery loss and heating. Pretty much what they said is that they "can't get parts" for one as old as mine (2009), so they didn't even crack it open. They did put in a new battery, but when I got it home, there was no difference in the performance. Ugh!

 

[pigoo3]

Thanks for the update. Sorry to hear that nothing was done concrete to fix things. Is this "Mac Store" an official Apple Store?

- Nick

 

[gloriapattismyt]

Yah, sure

Yep, it's the local, official, anointed and blessed Apple store. They no longer do the repairs here, but rather send the machines to our state's only large city for repair.
I can now hear the fan if I listen carefully and I think that may be the problem, but it bums me that they don't want to fix it.

 

[harryb2448]

Not the best place to use a notebook on your lap. Do you use iStatPro or similar to tell us what the heat is precisely? Also have a read of this link and you will see it is normal to be too hot for the lap:-


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/524626?tstart=0

 

[pigoo3]

I can now hear the fan if I listen carefully and I think that may be the problem, but it bums me that they don't want to fix it.

It's not the fan. The fan is actually running 100% of the time. Just when it's at a low rpm…it is hard to hear/notice.

- Nick

 

[gloriapattismyt]

Seriously??? Don't use a MacBook on your lap? If I want to sit in a chair at a desk, I'll use my iMac.
Anyway, it worked flawlessly for five years, so maybe I'm lucky. Then again, all my other Macs lasted longer than that.
Thanks for the info, tho. Very interesting.

 

[RadDave]

Seriously??? Don't use a MacBook on your lap? If I want to sit in a chair at a desk, I'll use my iMac.
Anyway, it worked flawlessly for five years, so maybe I'm lucky......

Hi again - well on the first page, I mentioned the app iStat Menus which monitors a number of your computer's activities, including the temperature & fan speeds - attached is a screenshot from my laptop - temps are shown for various locations & the fan speeds (two) are also shown (blue arrows) - spinning pretty fast but I cannot hear a thing, just to reinforce Nick's comment - now if for some reason the speed doubled, then I could probably hear them.

As to the comment on not using a laptop on you lap (or on a bed, as another example), just look at the bottom sides - those slits are for air circulation, and if covered will likely increase the temps in the computer - actually my MBPro usually sits on my legs while sitting in my den chair - I just make sure that those air vents are not covered. Dave
.

 

[harryb2448]

Yes it was seriosuly but that will be that.