Folding Forum

Hello. I have a HUGE catastrophe on hand right now. I am traveling with my Mac and for reasons not related to folding at home, I rebooted my computer. I find upon booting up that the Folding at home client has taken total control over my mac. My CPU is nailed at 100% all the time. My CPU temps are at 105 C. Fans are at full speed an unable to contain the temperatures. I checked the activity monitor and see my FAH client is the source of this. I deleted all FAH icons and rebooted. I still see my CPU at 100% utilization and in the activity monitor there are THREE processes running. FAHClient, FAHCore_A4, and FAHCoreWrapper. The user for these processes is NOBODY. That's what it says, NOBODY. Not my account name. I have never seen that before.

I can force quit the core that is running at 100%. However, it starts up again IMMEDIATELY. My CPU cannot cool down because it is constantly nailed up at 100%.

HOW DO I STOP THIS? I am traveling now and MUST have my computer. This is turning into a HUGE personal disaster. Right now my CPU has hit 107 degrees C. I cannot stop this. What is going on? I want to uninstall FAH completely from my Mac.

I need help immediately!!!

Thank you so much.

I have deleted every last file related to folding at home on my Mac. All library folders are gone. Everything. Yet the CPU it totally maxed out and my temps well over 100 C. This is like the worst virus imaginable. By far the worst Mac experience I have ever had. Please HELP.

The Mac install guide has a section for uninstalls.

Can you not just open Activity Monitor, highlight FAHClient or FAHCore_a4 and click on the red Quit Process button?

bollix47 wrote:Can you not just open Activity Monitor, highlight FAHClient or FAHCore_a4 and click on the red Quit Process button?

Yes. The problem is (now was) every time I force quit the core, IT STARTED RIGHT BACK UP!!!

I ended up finding the Launch Daemon and deleting that. Now the problem seems gone. My god that was awful. I cant believe how hot my CPU got. Why don't Mac's throttle down their CPU's when close to 110 C??

Update: I solved the problem by finding the launch daemon for Folding at Home and deleting that.

I dont know what is wrong with FAH on the Mac. I killed the process with the Activity Monitor and it would start right back up in 5 seconds. That's just flat out wrong. Awful code. I lost total control of my computer. If i want a process dead, it should stay dead.

I put that client on my mac just as a test, months ago. It sat there just fine unused after my test. I never folded a WU on my Mac because the temps are insanely high. However, once I rebooted today, FAH took over my computer and I lost control of it. A darn near catastrophe as I'm on the road traveling until mid week.

Crisis averted.......

First quick help: pause the folding slot (right mouse click on slot); in advanced settings parameter "pause-on-start" to "yes" for the slot and avoid restart after reboot. This should calm/cool down your CPU and gets you Mac back working for you. I wouldn't delete the folding software; you might want to use later. With pause-on-start you can avoid "little disaster" after reboot.

You have to use the uninstaller or know how to use the appropriate terminal commands to remove the folding client on a standard Mac or Linux install. Just deleting files is not going to remove the important files. Instead of removing files, did you try pausing folding using the slider in Web Control or Pause in FAHControl?

As for the client processes running as user nobody, that has been standard for the OS X client for a couple years. Which version of the client are you running? There is nothing wrong with the client, just your understanding of how to use and control it. Please read the guides.

As for throttling, I have never had a problem with my Mac's not throttling down when they approached temperature limits. That is something you may want to take up with Apple service

I looked for, but could not find any uninstall program to run to remove FAH on my Mac. So i just deleted every file I could find related to FAH. I ended up solving the problem that way. Is there any way I can wipe out EVERYTHING? I dont want FAH on my Mac.

Thank you for your help.

The OSX uninstaller is on this page near the bottom. I'm not sure how well it will work now that files have been deleted but there shouldn't be any harm in trying it. (EDIT: see next post)

There is a link to that page in the OSX Install Guide.

You should use the uninstaller.
It will work even if some files have been deleted, and get rid of files you may not know about.
It will unload the client launchd job even if the plist is gone.
It will not delete apps (FAHControl, FAHViewer) that have been moved from their standard location.

Thank you for directing me to the uninstaller. Stupid question here: Is installing the uninstaller actually uninstalling FAH? Boy that's a mouthful! I Installed the uninstaller but cannot find any program to run after that has completed. Is that it or do I need to do more?

That's it, except for tossing the uninstaller pkg in the trash.

The installer app always inserts "Install" in various places, confusing things.
That's why it says "Install Folding@home Removal" and such.
An installer pkg was just the most convenient way to wrap the uninstall scripts in a gui with authentication.

Ok Thanks. Glad to know that this problem can't happen again. What an amazing shock that was. I guess I had not rebooted my Mac in several months. What an eye opener that was.