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Oven-hot MBP, would not shut down - Leopard bug? I'm FUMING!

scaredpoet

scaredpoet

macrumors 604
Original poster
Apr 6, 2007
6,628
360
Okay, I've been using Leopard on mu MBP since the day it came out (pre-ordered it), and up until now I thought I was extremely lucky, having not encountered any bugs. Until this morning.

I was using my MBP at home to check up on a few things (and even browse these forums before having to get real work done) before heading in to work. As Murphy's law would have it, today is going to be a long day and myself and my MBP are working overtime, doing my usual A/V/Photo work during the day and then giving a 3 hour presentation/demo tonight. I'm not going to be done until about 9:30 p.m. In fact the only reason I'm typing this out right now is because I'm waiting for my MBP (which has today's presentation on it) to "cool down," for reasons that will become apparent shortly.

Anyway, I was checking up on my e-mails and presentation before leaving for work, and as I was packing up, I shut down my MBP, and THOUGHT it had shut down completely. I've been noticing that since the Leopard upgrade, my MBP has been appearing to shut down very quickly, quicker than Tiger. Anyway, appearing to be completely off, I put my MBP in it's carrying case with sleeve, and drove to work.

At work, it took me a while to take out my MBP because I was busy doing other stuff on my desktop (an iMac) here in the office. Finally I'm ready to go abck to tonight's presentation. I open my case, reach in and grab my MacBook, and very nearly burn my hands in the process. This thing is HOT!

Apparently, despite my screen going black when I told the MBP to shut down, and NO indicator light on the front of the case (pulsing or otherwise), my MBP apparently had never shut down and never event went to sleep and was running the whole time, for about an hour and a half, inside its carrying case.

I managed to pull the MBP out of the bag (after fashioning some "oven mits" out of some nearby foam sheets) and placed it on a notebook cooling pad I have on my desk, and set the pad's fans to their highest setting to try and get this thing to a sane temperature. The MBP was unresponsive: screen was still off, would not "wake" up, though the internal fans were blowing full blast. I was able to shut it down fully by pressing and holding down the power button.

So now the obvious questions:

1. What kind of damage should I be looking for? Are there any logs I should be checking? Appearance-wise, there doesn't seem to be anything melted or heat damaged, but I'm concerned about hidden damage I'm NOT seeing.

2. Has anyone else experienced this?

This has me totally FURIOUS. The work I have to do tonight is one thing; if my MBP isn't up to the task tonight, I have other alternatives, and although it will be really annoying, it won't be the end of the world. What angers me is that, after all the care I've taken to avoid so much as putting a scratch on this thing in the time I've had it, this Mac may very well be toast - literally - all because it didn't shut down when I told it to, despite it having APPEARED to have shut down.

Even assuming there was no harm, I'm not going to feel right about turning this guy off again and storing it in its bag without pulling the battery.

At any rate: after about 20 minutes of my writing out this rant, it seems to now be at a temperature when I can no longer cook breakfast on it. It appears to be booting fine. iStat Pro shows my fans running at 6000 RPM despite my CPU and case having since cooled down to around 50 degrees C, though it's since come down from that and the fans have since slowed.

It appears to be running normally though I THINK (I'm not sure) that my display is a bit dimmer than it used to be, even if I set the brightness to full.

Ugh. Now comes the paranoid period where I scrutinize every little thing and wonder if something's wrong. :mad:
 
yeah... assuming you are still in warranty or you have applecare or whatnot, this problem should be covered by apple as it wasn't anything you did specifically. Overheating has been a problem in general, so if something is fried Apple will help :)
 
Probably fine. The core processors are rated to perform normally up to 100ºC.

You're making too big of a deal over this.
 
Oh my gosh, so much drama.

The machine is most likely fine.

First thing I would do is reset the SMC.

If your blood pressure goes up with something like this, I'd hate to see you deal with your internet connection or home phone going down.

Good luck.
 
I know it's not the same, but I hope it can offer a little comfort.

My wife's office Dell laptop did exactly this recently. She shut it down, or thought so, and popped it straight in her backpack. When she got home and took it out it was seriously too hot to touch. We took the battery out straight away and set it on a cool surface and kept an eye on it. I was genuinely concerned it could explode or catch fire. Imagine if that happened whilst she was still wearing it?

I figured there was nothing really wrong with it, it's just that how hot it gets when given zero ventilation whilst snugly packed away.

Anyway, the point is the laptop came away from this unscathed and works fine. So it can be survivable! I hope yours suffers no ill effects.
 
I leave mine on 24/7 and it doesnt do any damage to it. Yes it is hot. But so is any computer which is left on. However, it is highly doubtful that it will be damaged by it. And I dont think Apple is accepting any more lawsuits based on burned body parts after their clarification that it is a notebook computer and not a LAPtop computer.

One thing I would recommend though is getting a cooling base if you are truely concerned about it.

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the system most likly wouldnt respond for the same reason it didnt shut down, not because it was too hot, so i think you are ok ;)
 
Sounds like something that happened to my PowerBook on the day that I bought it. It basically overheated, didn't sleep properly, fans were roaring and display/keyboard/power button totally unresponsive to the point where only pulling the battery out would turn it off.

Don't know what caused it but it obviously wasn't a Leopard bug ;)

And nothing ever went wrong with that machine again, so don't worry too much.
 
timish said:
Oh my gosh, so much drama.
Click to expand...

Yes, I now can identify with everyone else who has has spent $2,000+ on a laptop only to see it nearly burn itself up.

If your blood pressure goes up with something like this, I'd hate to see you deal with your internet connection or home phone going down.
Click to expand...

Oh, they go down regularly, and I cope. They just don't threaten to burn my hands and my house down when they fail, too. If yours did, I'm sure you'd say a lot more than "Oh my gosh."
 
freewill said:
I thought "fuming" was supposed to be a pun on it being "oven-hot".
Click to expand...

Actually it was. Even when I'm annoyed, I do sometimes try my hand at pun-humor.

But clearly, some don't see any humor at all when their precious Apple is criticized for making computers that do silly, yet potentially dangerous things.

Oh well, them's the breaks. *shrug* At least things seem to be running fine now, though i've yet to try shutting it down again.

Also:
And I dont think Apple is accepting any more lawsuits...
Click to expand...

Thanks, but I have no intention of suing anyone; I just want to be sure my computer didn't kill itself. I figured that if the laptop was too hot for me to handle, that's not a good thing. I've also kept computers running 24/7 (we have servers with a 200+ day uptime at work), so i know he difference between "always on"-warm and THIS level of heat.

Anyway, I've pretty much done all the prep I can do for tonight. i just hope no other calamities happen. :)
 
this used to happen to me with tiger, but the leopard upgrade actually fixed it. it happened about a dozen times over 6 months and never had a problem. i wasn't shutting down, i just shut the computer and expected it to sleep, but it had insomnia so it kept running in it's case, sans ventilation. it was really hot when i got it out, and then wouldn't come out of it's trance without a hard reset, but ive never experienced any issues caused by parts having been too hot. i got into the habit of waiting for the pulsating sleep light before packing it away.
 
It's not that we think Apple is immune to criticism. For me, at last, it's that you're angry over a single incident. This exact same thing has happened to me a couple of times. It's not a big deal and my computer kept working just fine.
 
desenso said:
It's not that we think Apple is immune to criticism. For me, at last, it's that you're "fuming," pun or not, over a single incident.
Click to expand...

In that case, forgive my ignorance. Next time my hands are burned, I'll just laugh it off. :rolleyes:

Christ.
 
i've experienced this once, maybe twice. With Leopard as well.

The first occasion I opened my carrying case and found that it was abnormally warm inside...As if the MBP had been on for a while but when I removed it from the case it was off. I place my computer vent-up inside the case, so it has a tiny bit of air to breathe at least.

The second time was when I shut it down and it LOOKED like it turned off (screen shuts off) but when I closed the screen I saw the front LED light up indicating it was still on, and the fans were very faint (easily mistaken for off). I waited a bit, but I had to go to class so I shut it down with the power button.
 
I suggest you get all your friends together and have a barbecue before it goes up in flames. Then you can sue apple and buy many more macbook pros.
 
scaredpoet said:
In that case, forgive my ignorance. Next time my hands are burned, I'll just laugh it off. :rolleyes:

Christ.
Click to expand...

First of all, your hands weren't even burnt the first time according to your original post. Second, even if you had held your palm up against the laptop, I highly doubt it would have actually burnt you. The discomfort you feel from something which is very hot is quite different from actually getting burnt.

But this is all an aside. What I found most objectionable about your posts is how incapable you were of taking a little criticism. You have to realize that your post is one of the MANY that this forum sees from people who come on with totally frivolous complaints about Apple's quality control. People who have outrageously high standards are going to get mocked when they come here with a minor complaint and act as if Steve Jobs personally walked up and kicked them in the nuts.

If you want a thread of sympathy and outrage, try taking this post to a Windows or Linux forum.. I'm sure there will be plenty of people there to jump on your Apple-bashing bandwagon.

However, when you come to a pro-Apple discussion forum and write a rant that some of us find to be laughable, you should expect criticism and take it with a grain of salt...

Apple isn't perfect, they aren't immune to criticism. If your laptop breaks, call them and complain. We all know how liberal Apple are with replacements. If your computer catches on fire and burns down your house, sue Apple for negligently manufacturing a dangerous laptop. But if a rare software bug happens to result in your computer not shutting down, but instead getting hot, deal with it. Hell, post here and ask for advice.. no one will mock you for that. But when you act like Apple just threatened your life because your laptop didn't shut down once, people ARE going to laugh at you... I'm sorry, there's just no two ways about it.
 
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