Comments on: Fix Fan Noise & Overheating After Upgrading Mac OS X with an SMC Reset

By: TJ

TJ — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 02:03:41 +0000

1st gen mac book air. OMG this worked, my fan would run constantly for playing videos or games, didn’t know this was the issue. Thanks for this post!

By: Cornelius

Cornelius — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 15:57:55 +0000

Mountain Lion:

Resetting the SMC worked… that is all I can say.. os 10.8.2

By: Tracey

Tracey — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 01:29:35 +0000

Thanks so much for this info! My fan sounded like it was dying a slow and painful death. I even opened up my laptop and blew out the dust. I tried this and started her up and was delighted to hear it sound like its old self! THANKS!!!

By: Aoife

Aoife — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 13:40:56 +0000

Wow resetting the SMC actually worked!

By: Aamir

Aamir — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 15:34:36 +0000

2 days of madness and multiple reinstalls later, this fixed it!

I am running: Macbook Pro 13″ 2010 model (Macbook7,1) on Lion. My CPU usage has been REALLY high and in Activity Monitor, kernel_task was running wild and hogging all my CPU.

Resetting the SMC fixed the issue!

By: Dante

Dante — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 12:18:35 +0000

Thanks a lot! U saved my life! Worked for me!

By: Randy

Randy — Mon, 28 May 2012 11:29:14 +0000

I have a 2007 Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard that has been exhibiting the fan problem on and off for a while now. I have reset the SMC once before which seemed to work and have just done again with instant success.
Just hoping it stays alright for a while this time.
On a slight tangent, after I upgraded to Snow Leopard the laptop would continue to run even though the lid was closed. This caused me much distress on quite a few occasions as it had been in a nice snug laptop bag and got very very hot several times, I am just hoping that it has not sustained too much damage. I try to shut it down now when travelling.

By: Morten Slott Hansen

Morten Slott Hansen — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:45:07 +0000

I have just upgraded to 10.7.3 and the Fan Noise is still there when the computer is running idle. Only solution is to shut it down (not restart) and wait 5 sec. before booting – and then it keeps quiet unless I visit a website with flash.

Seems to be a problem whenever I close the lid and open it again – Must be a software issue…

I have a Macbook Air model 2011 with all the bells and whistles.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 06:03:43 +0000

Just did this and it’s working!

2008 Macbook Pro, just upped to Lion
5000rpm fans and 74C running nothing but Safari
Did the reset
Now a reasonable 58C and 3000rpm fans

It’s bonkers, but it did work.

By: feenix

feenix — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 05:36:27 +0000

i have upgraded my mac to lion but its getting 2 long in startup..can anybody no whats wrong..m new at this stuffs

By: steve

steve — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:18:08 +0000

i had a similar problem with new macbookpro, installed Lion and then fan started to kick in lots and became very very hot, it never did that with snow leopartd

SOLUTION THAT WORKED FOR:
installed ‘gfxCardStatus’ and set it to ‘integrated only’ which means basically that the machine never uses the discreet graphics card. it worked. machine never gets hot, even when watching video, and i dont hear the fan.

all i can think is that the new lion os x does not switch from discreet to integrated when needed. its just always on discreet and hence machine was overheating when performing intensive tasks like video or flash

hope this helps

steve

By: Joseph

Joseph — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:34:56 +0000

I have a late 2008 Macbook Pro I consider it older, also pre-unibody models people call “old” now.

By: OSXDaily

OSXDaily — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:21:26 +0000

Yes resetting the SMC is a fairly common troubleshooting technique with power related issues. And yes, the MagSafe adapter is the magnetic AC Adapter.

If your Mac is running that hot, give it a try.

By: vdiv

vdiv — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:58:42 +0000

Not to be a pain but I have never had to do anything like that on a ThinkPad or a Lattitude. Sure they get warm and noisy, but 210 deg F?!? My 2010 15″ MacBook Pro regularly heats up above 80 deg C so I use smcFanControl to keep the fan going at a minimum of 4000 rpm instead of the default 2000 rpm. This keeps it at around 65 deg C. I expect the fan to die within a year.

Is resetting the SMC a standard operation procedure for MacBooks?

By MagSafe adapter, you do mean the AC power supply/adapter, right?

By: rascal01

rascal01 — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 11:48:59 +0000

Could you maybe tell me how old an ‘older macbook’ more or less should be?
I’ve got one dating from early 2008. I’m not sure if that would classify as an older or a newer macbook.