Q: Three beeps, graphic corruption and freeze
My MacBook Pro (9,2) is now over 3 years old. Still going strong. Yosemite. Past the AppleCare protection expiry date.
However, a hardware problem has cropped up, accelerated after a fresh reinstall of Yosemite (was slow as molasses before that).
Whenever I put even the slightest pressure (it is actually worse now) on the bottom of the MacBook, it shows graphic corruption (purple discoloured horizontal lines in 3 to 4 vertical stacks) and then the whole system needs to be rebooted.
Of late, I have even started seeing behaviour where the system refuses to boot, but beeps thrice.
Googling for a solution leads one to think that a badly seated RAM is the issue. So, I opened up the MacBook Pro. Found a lot of accumulated dust inside. Cleaned it.
Then removed the RAM chips one by one, and reseated them carefully. They did not look loose in any way.
The system problems continued.
What else could be wrong? A local computer repair shop says it could be a cracked / damaged motherboard. If that is the case, I am junking this. Another possibility is bad RAM (or rather, RAM that has gone bad). Could mimic the symptoms above, couldn't it?
Should I try replacing the RAM?
MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.4)
Posted on Sep 30, 2016 9:16 AM