iMac beeps, won't start. Screen is black, three beeps, power light flashes.

Question

iMac beeps, won't start. Screen is black, three beeps, power light flashes.

My wife's flat screen iMac won't start up. When you press the power button, the fan starts and it beeps three times. The power light on the screen flashes...one long flash, three short ones, then off for a few seconds then repeats.

It was working fine yesterday. She had updated to 10.4.11 the day before. The first time she restarted after the install, it stuck on the gray/apple screen, but when she restarted after that, it was fine. Then, late in the day yesterday, it just shut down all by itself. When she tried to restart it, it behaved as described above, and the same today. I've also tried disconnecting all peripherals and restarting...same thing.

Any advice would be welcome! It has a new logic board, as of a month ago.

Thanks,
Eric

iMac Flat Screen, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Nov 19, 2007 4:22 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Bryan G

Level 1

21 points

Nov 19, 2007 7:33 PM in response to Eric Houghton

As far as I know, the three beeps would signify a bad memory stick. I just had this problem the other day, so I checked the RAM that I installed (into the bank INSIDE the iMac, not where the airport card is located). Sure enough, once I removed the stick, I rebooted and was fine. Thankfully Ramjet provides a lifetime warranty on their RAM! At any rate, give this a try...

Reply

Answer 2

Nov 19, 2007 8:33 PM in response to Bryan G

Would the memory have just spontaneously gone bad? This is the same memory that's been installed for the past five years with no prior issues.

Reply