Overheating, Freezing, Slow responses, crashing

[grahamie]

Have had my i7 MacBook Pro 15" for a little over 2 years.

The past year or so, it has been constantly getting very hot all the time, even if there's only 1 or 2 simple apps opened. The fan goes on full blast all the time and it's almost always hot.

I thought the overheating was being caused by dust perhaps, so I opened it up and dust wasn't a big problem really. I even sprayed it with a can of air to make it totally clean. That didn't work, so I'm thinking it's a software issue. I check the Activity Monitor and there's nothing unusual, though. This wasn't a problem in the first year I had the computer, but in the last year, it's been a constant annoyance.

I installed Mountain Lion on it a few days after it came out and have had bad results. Constant crashing of Safari, MS Office apps, Skype, iPhoto, VLC, etc. If it's not freezing, then it's got beach balls and very unresponsive.

I do not mind paying for some software that might fix all these issues, but I don't know which one would be good. Is there some kind of diagnostic software out there that might do the trick? Or, at least solve 1 or 2 of my problems? The computer is still functional, but I'm just getting annoyed by these things over time.

If anyone can help me figure out what I can do about these things, I'd appreciate it.

 

[GGJstudios]

The past year or so, it has been constantly getting very hot all the time, even if there's only 1 or 2 simple apps opened. The fan goes on full blast all the time and it's almost always hot.

Start by using accurate information. Use iStat Pro (free) or iStat Menus ($16) to get accurate readings of your temps, fan speeds and much more.

I check the Activity Monitor and there's nothing unusual, though.

Are you checking it properly?

1. Launch Activity Monitor
2. Change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes"
3. Click on the CPU column heading once or twice, so the arrow points downward (highest values on top).
4. Click on the System Memory tab at the bottom.
5. Take a screen shot of the entire Activity Monitor window, then scroll down to see the rest of the list, take another screen shot
6. Post your screenshots.

 

[grahamie]

Wow, thanks a lot! I really appreciate the help on this. I think I posted the pics correctly.

But the important thing is that there's appears to be an app called "VShieldupdate" running in the background eating up 99% of my CPU. That must be the problem. I read that it comes from vmware, which I Might have installed a long time ago and deleted, but didn't uninstall properly.

How to get rid of Vshieldupdate?

Also, I have Carbonite as a backup program. That seems to be taking up a lot of CPU usage. Anyone else have that problem? Not sure if I'm the only bozo here who uses Carbonite haha.

 

[GGJstudios]

But the important thing is that there's appears to be an app called "VShieldupdate" running in the background eating up 99% of my CPU. That must be the problem. I read that it comes from vmware, which I Might have installed a long time ago and deleted, but didn't uninstall properly.

How to get rid of Vshieldupdate?

VShieldUpdate process spiking CPU after Mac OS X Lion upgrade

Also, I have Carbonite as a backup program. That seems to be taking up a lot of CPU usage. Anyone else have that problem? Not sure if I'm the only bozo here who uses Carbonite haha.

Anyone having the issue with CarboniteDaemon that's killing battery life on MacBooks?