MacBook crashes with so much of heat while the lid is closed

crashmacbook prosleep-wake

Sometimes, while I close the lid of my MacBook as it usually is while you don't use it, and leave it on the desk without connecting it to an adapter, I find that my MacBook is insanely heated. When I open the lid and check out the Mac, the OS has crashed and the trackpad doesn't function, forcing me to restart the Mac.

After the restart, the alert is shown with a message like: Because a problem occurred, it has been restarted.

This has occurred multiple times, possibly over more than 10 times in 2 years, also on my older MacBook Pro Retina. However, why does this occur while the lid is closed and the computer isn't working?

And finally, is there any possible way to prevent this? I don't remember if this problem happens when I connect it to an adapter.


UPDATE

In Diagnostic and Usage Messages pane in Console.app, I found the following log message:

9/14/16 06:54:57.000 kernel:
com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.kernel.tcpstat
com.apple.message.signature: tcpinfo
com.apple.message.signature2: mDNSResponderHel
com.apple.message.signature3: launchd
com.apple.message.summarize: YES

After that, the computer seemed to be not working and the next log message is the one when I found it was not working and thus restarted, which occurred in 2 hours later.

The last log message before the following:

9/14/16 06:54:44.436 Exchange Rates:
com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.coretls.client_finished
com.apple.message.signature: tls
com.apple.message.signature2: redacted_bundle_id
com.apple.message.value_events: 1
com.apple.message.value_alpn_received: 1
com.apple.message.summarize: YES
com.apple.message.value_ocsp_peer_enabled: 1
com.apple.message.value_ocsp_response_received: 1

There are 6 more logs at the exactly same time from the app, and the next log files before them is from com.apple.usage.app_activetime, occurred 2 seconds before them.

So maybe it the app Exchange Rate the one that caused the crash and forced me to restart? If so is there anything on me that prevents this (except uninstalling it, which is not a solution here)?

Best Answer

The system is designed to let the CPU idle when heat becomes an issue. Crashes indicate a bad software install or faulty hardware. Either of those can be worked out with Apple Support.

If you want to troubleshoot the software yourself, make a backup and then perform an erase install.

If you can crash the Mac with a clean install and no restore of your data or installation of third party apps - that's a perfect test to isolate hardware as the faulty item.