Macs Fan Control - Solving Freezes on iMac Late 2009 Models

Readers of this blog might know I’ve complained about frequent lockups on my desktop machine, an iMac Late 2009 model. The problems have been happening since 10.6 and I’ve made little progress at determining the source.

The freeze is an odd one: the mouse pointer still moves fine and you can even remotely connect via SSH for a brief period after the freeze, but it is impossible to control applications or reboot. A full reinstall seemed to resolve things for a while, but then it started freezing again. I tried to isolate the running apps, but nothing is different from my MacBook Pro install, so that didn’t help.

Finally, I found a few posts suggesting this was a result of the GPU overheating in iMacs of that era. I had tried several fan control apps but still couldn’t get one to work. For one thing, the feature in some fan control apps that checks the sensors to decide when to increase fan speed does not seem to work with the Late 2009 hardware. I was about to give up when I found out about Macs Fan Control.

With this app, I have to manually set the fan higher - the select by sensor doesn’t work (as mentioned). Below is an image from the same app installed on my laptop.

I generally increase my CPU fan to 3000+ RPM on warm days before the temps rise much, and I am happy to report that after almost a month, no freezes.

Prior to that I was averaging at least one per day.

If you’ve run into the same problem, let me know in the comments if this fix works for you.

Microsoft OneNote - Step-by-Step

In March I told you about Microsoft OneNote’s free release for Mac OS X and iOS. Since that time, I’ve gotten far more into using the application and I must say, it’s a perfect note-taking tool that lets you keep your content synchronized across all devices. Using the app effectively is easier thanks to continuing improvements to the design.

Not Sure You Want OneNote?

Check out Microsoft OneNote from the Mac App Store and look at the screenshots. This notebook is quite powerful, with full rich text, images, controls like checkboxes and much more to make it the perfect companion for basic project work. No, it’s not a replacement for a powerful CRM or other SFA tool. It’s not Excel or Word. It is a synchronized notebook, and it’s a pretty good one at that.

Today’s post walks through adding a new synchronized notebook, then adding a page and forcing a synchronization.

Make sure you have a Microsoft account, such as a live.com email address. You can create an email account for that domain by clicking here.

Once you have that account and you’ve installed OneNote, walk through these steps.

Make a new Notebook

 

Add a Page

Click the (+) on the right side of the box, or use the File menu.

Name the Page

Click above the day of week, date and time then type a page name. It will appear in the blue column at right.

Rename the Section Tab

Just double-click the tab and type.

Synchronize

Click the notebook name, then scroll down to the name (again, kind of redundant, right?), click the > and select Sync.

UP NEXT

This week we’ll explore how to open this Notebook “Example” on another Mac and on an iPad Mini.

Thanks for reading!

Need a System Configuration Summary? Try EtreCheck!

If you’ve ever gone to Apple’s support forums and asked for help with a problem (or any support forum, for that matter), chances are a savvy guru will tell you they need some basic configuration details for your Mac. There is a great (and free) tool that will help you gather that information quickly, and it’s called EtreCheck.

After installing into your application folder, running EtreCheck will scan your system and full information from settings files and scan important system folders for things like Kernel Extensions, User Launch Agents, Internet Plug-Ins and 3rd Party Preference Panes. Here’s what you see on launch:

On completion, you’ll see a window with a scrollable collection of this data, like this:

From here you can copy the report to the clipboard and paste into a forum window or a rich document with even the free TextEdit app provided with Mac OS X). A detailed overview of the sections is available at this About EtreCheck page.

The nature of each section, typical problems and corresponding solutions would be too much to cover in a single blog post. For that matter, you’ll find dozens (hundreds?) of posts about topics like iMac freezes on Apple’s own support site, so this isn’t a problem solver. However, the first step to getting (free) help from people in the know is often providing them all of the details about your system in one post so they don’t have to ask you for these facts interactively.

As always, it’s a great idea to know your closest Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP). I want to give a shout out to a favorite near my hometown, maccentric. They have provided service for my Macs, both in-warranty and out-of-warranty, and I have always been satisfied to say the least.

If you have a favorite non-Apple AASP, please share the name and URL in the comments below!