The MacBook Pro is Dead; Long Live the MacBook Pro!

By C.V. Vick (6 posts) on October 17, 2006 at 7:33 pm

My new MacBook Pro recently developed a terrible tic. Actually it would be best described as a terrible ticking. I also noticed the MacBook Pro was get very hot, VERY HOT. (more than usual) I realized that there was a faint clicking sound coming from inside the notebook. Using advance deduction methodologies, I figure that my fan was failing.

As the problem got worse it was nearly impossible to keep the system running for more than 15min, and I had several GB of data that I needed to copy off to another system.

I obviously needed to get some airflow through the system using an external fan. Looking around my home office I came up with very effective and elegant solution.

 picture001mediumsmall.jpg

By attaching the vacuum cleaner to the back of the MacBook I was able to keep the temperature down and copy my data to a file share. Although, it's probably not feasible to take my vacuum cleaner with me to the office or on business trips, I am considering purchasing a DustBuster or one of those keyboard vacuums.

I got a replacement MacBook, reinstalled BootCamp Beta 1.1.1, WinXp, etc. and things have be running smoothly so far. BTW, the melting point of aluminum is 933 K.


Categories: Mobility

Comments (10) Comments RSS Feed

By jenvteal@intel.com on October 19th, 2006 at 11:07 pm
I LOVE THIS! J

By erlend@artueel.be on October 23rd, 2006 at 7:19 pm
I'm having the same problem but apple isn't helping at all...could I contact you MAD/cvvick?

Erlend

By Cv Vick on October 24th, 2006 at 2:08 pm
@Erlend

I'm not sure I can be of much help. My MacBook developed a hardware problem (bad fan) so I was able to get Apple to send me a new one.

Keep in mind that the MacBook is going to run "hot". Opinions vary as how hot is too hot.

Here's a tool that allows you to monitor the temparature of both CPU cores and the hard drive.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/12381

<cvv/>

By erlend@artueel.be on October 24th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Everything is still working ATM but the ticking is making me crazy...after some hours of working he ticks about every 15/20 seconds.

Any tips?

By Sandeep Dhar on November 1st, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Now why on earth would you want to re-invent the wheel? Why not buy the many available options in the market today - besides they are a good option anyways and you CAN take them with you on a trip!

Here is one popular brand I am sure you have heard of
http://www.targus.com/us/product_details.asp?sku=AWE01US

http://www.targus.com/us/product_details.asp?sku=PA243U

By Cv Vick on November 1st, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Although targus (among others) sells some great aux. cooling products, I really wasn't going spend $50 to correct an acute overheating problem caused by faulty hardware. I needed a solution immediately. I'm sure the ChilliHub would apeal to some, but the fact that it requires AC power sort of limits its usage wihen traveling. Plus a vacuum cleaner has so many other valuable uses.

So far my (new) MacBook Pro is working fine, albeit somewhat warm. To me it feels that OsX runs cooler than Windows XP (probably has something to with the fact that Windows XP doesn't support EFI (and neither does Vista I'm told))

By Carlton Gamble on January 3rd, 2007 at 9:00 pm
I've got the same problem my MBP 2Ghz gets really hot. I found a widget to monitor the temp. I've read somewhere a person modified the system preference to make the fan run at a constant rate fulltime to cool the system down overall. That way the fan can't go too slow and cause a heat build up. I'm thinking of getting a laptop cooler myself.

By Stew on January 7th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Is there any chance you are running XP under Parallels or some other VM? XP is just plain crap with the CD/DVD drive for some unknown reason and when it fancies fires it up to full pelt and just keeps it there. Then the system, whether PC or Mac will get damn hot.

It does my head in which is one of the many reasons I switched to Mac last month.

Same issue happens on my MBP when Parallels is running and there happens to be a disc in the drive.

May be totally irellevant - but it is the only time that I get this annoyance that many are complaining about.

By Cv Vick on January 8th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Carlton,

I've used a temp monitoring widget under OsX, but I've not been able to find one that runs under XP. With my replacement MackBook I've not experienced any "fail stop" problems. It's very important to not have any obstruction of the heating vents and insure the notebook is setting flat on the bottom feet to get maximum coolling.

<cvv/>

By Cv Vick on January 8th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Stew,

You raise an interesting point. In the past, I noticed this behavior with my Dell D600, but I assumed it was a flaky DVD drive. I'll do some testing to see if get the same results with MacBook Pro. Thanks,

<cvv/>


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