This is weird. Two times in the past week my new iMac froze on me in the middle of a project, and it sounded a loud alarm. I had to do a hard shut down. Really, it was loud enough to be a fire alarm. Anyone know what's going on?
iMac
Nino --
Did you look in your Console log to see what is listed there at the time you got the alarm??? Do you have any alarms set to go off in iCal?
Bee,
Thanks for the suggestion. But believe me when I say it sounds like a fire alarm. When it first went off it alarmed everyone in the house--and we have a two-story house. This alarm sound is actually that---an alarm so loud you have to step away from the computer. The only thing missing is the command from the robot, "danger, warning Will Robinson..."
Nino
Nino,
I have a 2010 27" iMac and last night at 3am it did exactly what you described. However it was sleeping at the time as was everyone in the house.
Not sure what caused it yet but would like to solve this.
I have an iMac too that is doing the same things as A.koesac. Would love to find a solution. Very disruptive to the household.
does anyone found a solution??
The "loud" alarm sound you speak of may be a the computer's motherboard reporting a kernel panic, here is a link to a knowledge base article relating to these problems; my first suggestion is read it through, if you find a matching 'alarm' sound code then that is most likely where the problem lies.
There are different sound codes for different errors, here is a link to an article about these codes
Add me to the list of iMac users who'd like to resolve the 'alarm' issue. I just experienced it again having to turn off the power strip and reboot. I was on the internet listening to an online radio stream that sounded like static once the alarm started.
At first I thought it might be a security software alarm but could find nothing in the preferences that indicated an option to adjust an alarm warning.
Any updates on this issue appreciated.
After many calls to AppleCare and trips to the Genius Bar I got this solved. They replaced the logic board and hard drive and I haven't had any problems for 2 months (touch wood).
They tried resetting the svram, other power down things, a 24 hour hardware test, reseating the ram, changing the ram none of which helped.
Good luck and I hope you have AppleCare still.
I had the same problem as well. I changed the RAM in it, and it seems to have done the trick. Hope this helps.
I am just now stumbling across this article after being rudely awakened by the trumpet of the dead coming from my iMac at approximately 3:30am a few nights ago... Since then I have had the same fire-alarmesque sound happening approximately every 6-10 hours at which point I am required to perform a hard reset to get the it back online. After said hard reset I get the alert that my computer shut down due to a problem.
After following Peter Miller's advice (see below) I was able to find this article, OS X: When your computer spontaneously restarts or displays "Your computer restarted because of a problem." - Apple Supp…
This "Kernel Panic" appears to be the issue I am experiencing and lo and behold I just had an alert for a software update.... Going to install that and hope for the best.
#backupdoublecheck
Loud alarm sound on my IMac
