whirring noise won't stop

jfitznc

Registered
I just installed Tiger and my computer keeps making a whirring noise. I called Apple Tech Support and they said it sounds like the noise the computer makes when it's looking for something or when a program is operating. There is not a disc in my drive. The noise has been going all day and it did NOT do this before I installed Tiger. I went to the Activity Monitor and there did not seem to be any abnormal programs running. It is taking some of my programs longer to boot up and some of them get stuck from time to time (where the color wheel starts spinning). Apple Tech support said to take it to an Apple service center. Am I totally out of my mind? Can anyone suggest why my computer is whirring? Thanks!
 
jfitznc said:
Can anyone suggest why my computer is whirring? Thanks!

You didn't give us much info to go on. Some pBook Tiger upgraders' have reported their fans running continuously. If you have a pBook, then your problem is likely to be Virex. If you have a pBook and have installed Virex, then I would unintall it. There is an uninstaller "in" the Virex disk image. And, the uninstaller may have been intalled if, and when, you installed Virex.
 
I have a pbook 1.33ghz and I am having the same problem: my fan runs continuosly. I have not installed virex in it; what else could it be? Also I have noticed that my pbook takes a long time to be put to sleep after I either press the power button > sleep or simply close it. This didn't use to happen under panther ... it will take half a sec to sleep ... now it takes almost 30 secs

Help Please!
 
the crunching sound is your hard drive.

the noisy whirring is your optical drive

the quieter whirry air-y sound is the cpu fans - it means the cpu is doing stuff. open activity monitor (utilities) and it'll show what is doing what, cpu, physical memory, virtual memory etc. i leave it on in the dock with the icon changed to cpu history groh, so ican view whats happening all the time.

get a g5 tower - big bloody fans whirring...
 
CATWEB said:
I have a pbook 1.33ghz and I am having the same problem: my fan runs continuosly. I have not installed virex in it; what else could it be? Also I have noticed that my pbook takes a long time to be put to sleep after I either press the power button > sleep or simply close it. This didn't use to happen under panther ... it will take half a sec to sleep ... now it takes almost 30 secs

Open Activity Monitor and see if some process is continuously using an excessively high percentage of your processor (and, thus, causing excessive heat). If one is, then quit the process, restart, and see what happens. See if you can get the fan issue resolved before thinking more about the sleep issue.
 
The Ghost said:
You didn't give us much info to go on. Some pBook Tiger upgraders' have reported their fans running continuously. If you have a pBook, then your problem is likely to be Virex. If you have a pBook and have installed Virex, then I would unintall it. There is an uninstaller "in" the Virex disk image. And, the uninstaller may have been intalled if, and when, you installed Virex.
Thanks for responding, Ghost. I do have a Powerbook and I uninstalled Virex, but it's still whirring. What else can it be?
 
The Ghost said:
Open Activity Monitor and see if some process is continuously using an excessively high percentage of your processor (and, thus, causing excessive heat). If one is, then quit the process, restart, and see what happens. See if you can get the fan issue resolved before thinking more about the sleep issue.
Hmmm. Nothing looks like its taking up a lot of CPU on the Activity Monitor. The problem seems to have started when I downloaded a bunch of widgets online. That's all I can think of. But these darn fans won't shut off. This isn't good for the computer, is it?
 
The Ghost said:
You didn't give us much info to go on. Some pBook Tiger upgraders' have reported their fans running continuously. If you have a pBook, then your problem is likely to be Virex. If you have a pBook and have installed Virex, then I would unintall it. There is an uninstaller "in" the Virex disk image. And, the uninstaller may have been intalled if, and when, you installed Virex.
Stop the presses--it WAS Virex! It was something called the "Virex Schedule Editor," which is in the Utilities folder. It was using 92% of the CPU. The whirring sound stopped just a few moments after I moved this program to the trash. Thanks for your help, Ghost!
 
jfitznc said:
Stop the presses--it WAS Virex! It was something called the "Virex Schedule Editor," which is in the Utilities folder. It was using 92% of the CPU. The whirring sound stopped just a few moments after I moved this program to the trash. Thanks for your help, Ghost!

You are very welcome.
 
The Ghost said:
Open Activity Monitor and see if some process is continuously using an excessively high percentage of your processor (and, thus, causing excessive heat). If one is, then quit the process, restart, and see what happens. See if you can get the fan issue resolved before thinking more about the sleep issue.

The Ghost, I have only one process with over 1% CPU usage (PMTool ~6%). I undersand this process is related to the activity manager. I don't think that is the problem, but then again i am not an expert by any means. If you think of anything else please let me know. thanks in advance!
 
CATWEB said:
The Ghost, I have only one process with over 1% CPU usage (PMTool ~6%). I undersand this process is related to the activity manager. I don't think that is the problem, but then again i am not an expert by any means. If you think of anything else please let me know. thanks in advance!

I will keep thinking. On your sleep issue, you might try resetting your PMU. If you are really lucky, doing so might help with your fan problem, but I seriously doubt it.
 
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