Suddent constant fan noise, 60% CPU use in safe mode with nothing open. Help?

[Sandino]

Hi, I hope this is in the right place, I'm new here but I'm in a bit of a panic because I depend on my Macbook for work and I need help figuring out why it's doing this. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

I have a MacBook Air, purchased in June of 2013, running OSX 10.9.4. It's a 1.3 GHz model with Intel Core i5 and 4 GB, 1600 MHz DDR3 memory.

This morning I woke up and it was shut down. As soon as I started it up, the fan began to run, much louder than normal. It was immediately after start-up, and I've replicated that condition, so it doesn't seem to be related to over-heating.

I saw that a rogue process might be responsible in forum posts, so I checked Activity Monitor. Right now the only application open is Chrome. It's not showing any process using more than Chrome at around 12%, but the "system" is shown as using around 75% of my CPU.

I tried rebooting in safe mode, and with no programs open in safe mode "system" is using 60% CPU.

I couldn't afford the extended warranty, so I'm several months out of warranty and can't really afford to pay for repairs. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[t0mat0]

Might be worth taking a shot of your activity monitor by cpu usage highest usage processes at top.

 

[Peace]

Re-install the O/S.

 

[Intell]

Make sure Activity Monitor is showing all processes and not just your processes.

 

[t0mat0]

Might want to backup first if doing that?

 

[Peace]

Might want to backup first if doing that?

I agree. Back it up before re-installing it but leave Chrome out of the picture. That app has too many holes in it.

 

[Sandino]

Screenshot

Thanks, that was a good tip. I switched Activity Monitor to "All processes and discovered kernel_task eating almost 300% of CPU.

So what can I do about this?

 

[Intell]

Backup your data, reinstall Mac OS X after wiping the disc, ditch Chrome, test for high loads, then restore your data. In that order.

 

[Sandino]

Thanks Intell, I appreciate it. Any good resources for reinstalling and wiping the disc? I haven't done either before, so I'm going to go google but if you have anything handy I'd appreciate it. Thanks again very much for your help.

 

[Intell]

Restart while holding Command-R to boot into Recovery then use Disk Utility to wipe the drive and then reinstall Mac OS X. Note: Make sure you backup everything you want to save first, once you erase the drive it cannot be recovered.