My Mac Book Pro is very hot !!!

Question

Hi just recently I have been unable to touch the rear edge of the underside of my Mac Book Pro because it SO HOT it almost burns me !!!!, happily it still appears to work ok, maybe the cooling fans have stopped working , is there perhaps a way I can check the internal temperature of the circuit board ???
PS. I am NOT running any high power software, I am simply running only Safari and Mail nothing else !!!!
Tim

Answer 1

Install software like iStat Menus 5.00 to monitor the fans and temperatures. Then:
Pre-Mavericks
Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select All Processes from the Processes dropdown menu.  Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order.  If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar.  Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.
Mavericks and later
Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder.  Select All Processes from the View menu.  Click on the CPU tab in the toolbar. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order.  If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar.  Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process.  See if that helps.  Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.