MBAir closed, fans go to full throttle, ideas?

[jeffg819]

Had my 13" sitting closed on the nightstand and heard what sounded like the fans hitting full speed. Looked at the Air and said to myself, no way.... Was wrong, yes way! Opened the machine, no screen response. Had to hold down the power button to shut down the machine.

Does anyone have any idea what would cause this? I've never had it happen before on any of my Mac portables.

I looked through some of the logs but that's about like looking under the hood of my car when it will not start. Outside of something obvious, have no idea what I'm looking at.

 

[aristobrat]

Sounds like an application started using a lot of CPU, which generated a lot of heat, which caused the fans to turn on. When you close the lid of your Mac, it should have gone to sleep. Since it didn't, I'm guessing some program got hung up.

There's really no log that would have shown that.

Unless it happens again, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[dmelgar]

Usually a device driver or hardware related event. This has happened to me when I unplugged a USB device right as the machine was going to sleep.

 

[jeffg819]

Thanks for the info on this. Hopefully, it's a one time deal. Definitely gives me something to consider when I go to put away the machine.