Hire an exorcist. Or better yet, get your fan replaced. It sounds to me like a badly blown bearing or bushing (ooh... alliteration!)

I am willing to bet that is a fan clogged up or hitting a wire and/or the case; also sounds like a cd-rom drive that is about to die but the user would know because he would have had to put a cd in there to make that noise.

I wonder if he shakes the laptop or puts it up-side-down if the noise changes; if so the fan is probably out of place and hitting something it shouldn't be!

I would recongnise that sound anywhere it just an extraction fan that has not been lubed properly. You'll need to get to the fan dissassemble the casing of it and lift remove the plastic washer, lift off the turbine assembly and apply 1 drop of lube (i use bones speed cream personally for bearings) and reassemble.
I have a toshiba laptop tht used to make an identical sound.

maybe it has soomething to do with the cd drive. either way, mac's suck.

My Titanium Powerbook made a similar noise. At first I almost crapped a Miata because I thought my hdd was breaking down, and I hadn't backed up in a while. But then I came to my senses and realized it was just the fan. I used a can of compressed air to clean out all the vents and spin the fan rotors to fling off any debris. I haven't heard the intermittent buzzing since. If that doesn't work, I would try what ACD suggested.

Yeah, a noisy fan is incontrovertible proof that Macs suck!

(BTW, Marvin, "mac's suck" has an incorrectly used apostrophe)

C'mon now, we all know that's the sound of your neighbor's Pinto trying to start up.

Isn't it obvious? During the production of that mac, Chewbacca slipped inside there, now he wants to get out.

Wow, my old Dell 8200 made that same sound...when i looked for the sound in the box, it was the video card fan...lubed it up and that's it.

mine made the same noises sent it back and the replaced the fan and something else that deals with the fans and the noise was gone im surprised they didnt fix it the first time too- apples support is awesome

yup fan belt.. :)

yup fan belt :)

Oh yeah that's definitely the fan. We had one laptop and one desktop that both started doing that. Shouldn't those losers at the "Genius" Bar be able to swap that out rather easily?

When I use work as repair tech at an electronics store we heard alot of this. The noise is most definately a fan, a really loud one. Usualy though it takes years to get that bad, or one good dropkick. Another possibility is pet hair, though this one sounds like an entire cat crawled in there.

It's the sound of his money going down the drain. Or more, a garbage disposal.

Sounds like there's a Mac truck convention inside your MBP! That is a really loud noise. I'm sure glad mine doesn't do that! Knock on aluminum.

nycbjr2 says:
yup fan belt.. :)

Nah, that's a fuel filter if I've ever heard one. It's gummin' up yer carb.

gremlins, yup, i've had this problem before. after a while, i got suspicious, so i took it to my local witch doctor. she fixed it right up

With all the problems the Macbook pro has, it can be officially called a LEMON!!

With all the problems the macbook has been having since lanch it could officially be called a LEMON!!

I think he's test driving the iBod. bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Is the hamster properly fed?

Poor Bastard... He should have gotten a thinkpad.

My MacBook Pro had this exact problem. One of the two fans has failed. Just hand it over to Apple and they'll replace it.

(btw, by the GODS the sound my machine made when I ran Parallels before they got the CPU usage down! I swear, I'm sure it could be heard three floors up. Such a relief when it was fixed.)

These things happen and aren't really anything Apple *could've* done something about before that noise started, short of replacing every component in the machine in case it was going bad . . . What the hell is up with people posting videos of every single problem they have with their new macs nowadays?

Itabor: I changed my fan on my own, and it's not trivial business... Takes about an hour, and that if you're used to messing inside powerbooks/macbook pros.

someone listening to this on a macbook pro heard nothing.

Could be a bad muffler bearing...

Or not.

The particular weirdness of this one is probably a combination of bad fan bearings (Apple may have removed one fan that had bearings that lasted 12 hours and replaced it with a brand new one that also has 12-hour bearings...) and the laptop's fan speed control - the computer's trying to turn the fan speed up and down, and the fan stops completely when it's turned down.

It's probably not worth trying to fix it yourself. To do that, you either have to swap in your own replacement fan, or try oiling the bearings of the existing one - if you want to try that, the #1 Google hit for "fan maintenance" has instructions.

(Wow, that dude really knows his stuff. And he's devilishly attractive, too!)

But given that the fan's buried inside the laptop, and also given that a small fan that's been making a bad noise for a while has probably chewed its bearings up pretty well, it's unlikely to be worth the effort unless you're used to wrangling laptops and can lay your hands on a replacement.

If the owner keeps returning the laptop, I'm sure Apple are eventually going to come up with a non-crap replacement fan :-).

I'd hit it until it stopped.

What it sounds like to me is something is ontop of the fan stopping it from moving efficently, on my Chipset fan, a piece of the metal got bent down and it made a noise very simular to it.

heartattackcity says:
someone listening to this on a macbook pro heard nothing.

So the MacBook's speakers are having problems now, too?

What kind of a person would run a weedwacker in the room the whole time you're trying to film your MBP problem?

Did you perhaps install Boot Camp and Windows on your machine? That would explain the sound of caged demons... "It's too nice in here, I can't even crash the place, somebody open some Windows, I'm gonna throw up!"

That really doesn't sound good, before that MacBook firmware was released to fix noisy fans mine occasionally sounded like it was going to take off... but it does sound like a aeroplane trying to take off lol

Its without doubt the CPU fan, he just needs to replace it or 'lube her up'.

It's most likely the headlight oil - you should get that topped up ASAP.

"But the noise came back."

Apparently they did fix it, it failed again.

As this guy did not scan the his domicile with the camera, we don't know if he lives in a dust bowl, or has a cat/dog/bird with dander problems. Fans can be fail due to environmental issues . . .

we cant hear anything bc to us its just normal noise... now that we took all the fun out and ruined the joke... deff not worth a diy just send it in

Eric says:
So the MacBook's speakers are having problems now, too?

I believe it's your sense of humor that might be having the real issues =/

"It's most likely the headlight oil - you should get that topped up ASAP."

It sounds to me like he needs some elbow grease!

I have the same noise, but apple is supposed to be sending me a box to mail back to them. I try not to be an apple fanboy but they seem to be taking care of the issue at no cost to me, so I am not too mad about it. But still, if they had only fixed the whine/moo problems before they shipped the machines in Feb. then none of us would be in this mess of having to be without our computers for the second time!

I think the end of that would make a great base for a techno song.

"apples support is awesome"

...I'm sure anybody who's dealt with those holier-than-thou assholes working at your local Apple store will agree with you on that.

stupid mac making laptops with bad fans. mwhahaha! my acer nor my other comp get annoying with fan noises. HORRAY for windows!

I had this happen with a PC once, it was about 5-6 years ago when they first came out with 1GHz laptops, woo!, anyways, one night I left my laptop open, and when I came downstairs in the morning, the cat was sleeping on it, I scared him away and everything was fine, a few days later it started to make a noise exactly like that, but the noise only lasted about 5min, then my computer just shut down and wouldnt turn back on, turns out that the cpu overheated, rather quickly too, i was pissed, especially at the cat, they need to put some sort of filter on there, or anti-cat device.

Good way to test if its the fan or not is check the temps and see if when the sound is being made is when the temperatures are high. of course, some laptops have the fan always going but at a lower voltage so it runs quieter and stuff, but under stress they usually crank it up, and that might be a way to find out if it is the fan without taking it apart.

By the way, what some of you seem to not realize is that the MBP has two fans. It's possible that his left died, got replaced, and then his right one died. And that's what I call *really bad luck*.

Joachim: "And that's what I call *really bad luck*"

How long before the largest fan recall in history of Apple?

I don't think it needs more lube... From the sound of the last 20 seconds it needs a towel & cigarette

All I had to do was turn off my speakers and the noise went away. Hope that helps!

I don't think you need more lube... from the sound of the last 20 seconds a good towel off and a cigarette is in order...

I can fix that noise but I'm going to need an old priest and a young priest...

This just in, Mac announces the Isaw! Cleverly packaged inside a harmless looking laptop, the Isaw is capable of cutting through most anything!...except the crap that the genius bar "Genius'" dispense with a just a pinch of arrogance.

"The Demon Possessed MacBook Pro"

I could almost guarantee that this is the problem from an ultra mega super duper fabulous high powered fans used to cool those MBPs down from their triple digit temperatures. My north bridge fan used to do this same noise (tone was a bit different since it was in an open space, and probably a diff sized fan), but I would tell Apple to replace all the fans in there.

You can upgrade your operating system to fix that sound here.

that's the fan. My VAIO started doing the same and then started shutin off. After getting the fan replaced it was great for the 3 months covered by the Sony Shop then started failing again. Sony sucks in quality.