MacBook Squeal / Whine (Core 2 Duo) – FIXED!
Posted on : 19-11-2007 | By : Andy | In : tech
Tags: 2, c2d, core, duo, macbook, whine
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Does your MacBook Core 2 Duo make an annoying high-pitched squealing noise when at low system usage? Mine did, so I called AppleCare. A half hour of waiting on hold and an hour troubleshooting had me headed to the local Apple store to get my baby looked at.
So this “genius” assumes I’m having problems with Leopard (apparently, nobody got the memo that v. 1.0 products are always a bad idea), and seems relieved when I tell him no. I explain the problem, and after trying to hear the noise in a busy mall, he finally disappears for about 10 minutes in back.
He comes back and says “Yeah, we can hear the noise. However, all our other macbooks back there make the same noise. Sorry, there’s nothing we can do for you.” WHAT?! Nothing you can do? Thanks, I’ll just get a headache every time I take this thing to the library.
Honestly though, I can’t put up with that. After poking around on the net, it looks like this is Intel’s C4 sleep state problem, and appears on C2D chips everywhere. It also happens on MacBook Pros, and some guy made a little utility that fixes it. The utility says “DO NOT USE THIS ON ANYTHING BUT A MACBOOK PRO.”
But I was desperate. So I installed in on my MacBook. The problem is gone!!!
I’ll let you know if it melts my MacBook, but for now I’m just really really happy. If you want the fix, it’s called “Shhmbp”. Go ahead, just click here and fix your MacBook C2D whine problems.
Oh, yeah, and I’m not making any safety guarantees here, just stating that it worked on my C2D MacBook (2.0 GHz, GMA 950). So don’t come crying to me if it don’t work for you.
**********Update, many months later****************
Whine is still gone, still no problems with my MacBook! Looks like this one has no apparent ill effects on a plain jane MacBook.
DUDE! THANK YOU so much for this information!
(and knock on wood, so far no subsequent problems resulting from downloading software for “MacBook Pro ONLY”…
since installing leopard, the high pitched squealing noise started in my MacBook and it has been driving me CRAZY! i took it to the apple service center, they said they fixed it. i got it home, and NOPE! still there!!!! funny enough, i discovered if i ran i tunes, the squeal wouldn’t happen—go figure! ANYWAY! who wants to have to do such quirky things when it shouldn’t be there in the first place!!! so i googled the problem, found your blog, and i said “what the hell!” and gave it a go.
sure enough……..PROBLEM SOLVED!!!!
you are my HERO!
THANK YOU a thousand times!!
cheers,
Tya
Glad to help!
THANKS SO MUCH!! I have a regular Macbook 2GHz and the squealing seemed to be getting worse by the hour. Installed this fix and BOOM…all gone. Hopefully for good. Thanks again!
As a side note, I used to have a wicked screen flicker, and now that problem seems fixed too! Wow. I’ve had it in the shop twice for the screen flicker, and everytime they tell me it’s ‘normal screen warm-up’. Which it wasn’t. But miraculously this has done it! There are lots of people out there with the flicker problem, hope they find this!!
I put this on my regular late 06 MacBook and it killed the whine. Thanks a million, it was driving me nuts.
evidently, this is still a problem for people, and shhmbp is still working on macbooks. i’ve been running it for over a year with no ill effects, so you can probably feel pretty free to use if necessary. glad to be a help to everyone in need!
1000x thank you!!!! Annoyed beyond belief… I literally typed “what the hell is the squeel from my macbook” into google and this site was the first result!! I’m a little paranoid its running hotter now but im happy the noise is gone.
I’m just reading this with interest. I have a first-gen Core Duo running Linux with both the whine and flicker problems. (Both of course are extremely grating on the nerves.) I don’t know if the flicker is gone, but I fixed the whine just before reading this. I fixed it by writing a tiny C program to load (one of) the CPU very lightly:
main(){ for(;;)usleep(50); }
For me a value of 50 is enough, but 100 is too little. (Smaller numbers make a heavier CPU load.) When I run this program the whine stops instantly; when I kill the program the whine resumes instantly! Hmm…
exactly, right on–apparently, this is an issue with one of the sleep levels of the cores on these processors, so keeping them both with a load on them keeps them from sleeping, and thus the noise stays away. (some of the first “fixes” for this whine actually were running photo booth, which used both cores!)
i can’t remember which of the sleep levels it was that caused this, but a different fix for you would be to figure out which one and disable it–google should hold the key.