Older Macbook Pro - How to Keep it Working

[iheartart]

I have a spring 2006 Macbook Pro 15". It's slowly starting to act up. I need it to live for a bit longer, even though I'd love a new laptop.

I replaced a long dead battery recently in hopes it would help some other issues, but it has not.

The issues:

- Running VERYn hot without any intensive applications running (ie. just browsing net, no video and it will hit 70 C according to smcfancontrol & shut down). I check my activity monitor - nothing intensive in the background. This is getting progressively worse. I've had issues with it running a bit hot for years, but as long as I didn't watch large videos it was fine. The fans work hard all the time when they only did during memory intensive stuff before.
Years ago, I replaced a dead fan; don't know how relevant that is to the issue at hand. I set it on a wood desk or table when running.

- The letter n will type out randomly & non-stop sometimes. The key is not stuck. Sometimes the cursor flickers when it does this. It looks like this:
nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn & can go on seemingly indefinitely if I don't click out of a text field. Or it will type random n letters while I am typing, like this: itn lnooks lniken thnis

Any ideas on how to solve these problems?
Is there any common maintenance stuff that could help?
Any other tips on how to extend the life of this machine?

I plan on taking it to a local mac repair guy, but I'd like to go in with some idea of what may need to be done.

 

[simon48]

I have a spring 2006 Macbook Pro 15". It's slowly starting to act up. I need it to live for a bit longer, even though I'd love a new laptop.

I replaced a long dead battery recently in hopes it would help some other issues, but it has not.

The issues:

- Running VERYn hot without any intensive applications running (ie. just browsing net, no video and it will hit 70 C according to smcfancontrol & shut down). I check my activity monitor - nothing intensive in the background. This is getting progressively worse. I've had issues with it running a bit hot for years, but as long as I didn't watch large videos it was fine. The fans work hard all the time when they only did during memory intensive stuff before.
Years ago, I replaced a dead fan; don't know how relevant that is to the issue at hand. I set it on a wood desk or table when running.

- The letter n will type out randomly & non-stop sometimes. The key is not stuck. Sometimes the cursor flickers when it does this. It looks like this:
nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn & can go on seemingly indefinitely if I don't click out of a text field. Or it will type random n letters while I am typing, like this: itn lnooks lniken thnis

Any ideas on how to solve these problems?
Is there any common maintenance stuff that could help?
Any other tips on how to extend the life of this machine?

I plan on taking it to a local mac repair guy, but I'd like to go in with some idea of what may need to be done.

I'm sure an SSD would help, but it sounds like any repairs and/or upgrades for it wouldn't be worth the cost.

 

[simonsi]

I would take it apart and vacuum it out, you possibly just have an accumulation of dust causing the temps. While at it you could blow out the keyboard above an below, possibly reseat the keyboard cable(s) - but this is more hit and miss to resolve the "n" repeating issue.

Then put it back together and see if any improvement. I wouldn't spend money on it before seeing if this works.

 

[maflynn]

I'd be hesitant to put a lot of money into the 8 year old laptop, but cleaning it out as previously mentioned may help the cooling. The keyboard issue maybe hardware failure occurring so a keyboard replacement may be the only option.