3 beeps on start up

Hi I am also currently having the same problem 3 beeps on start up. I have read articles from this site about the cause of the problem and most answers are pointing to ram failure or something, but in fact i dont think my imac doesnt have a busted ram. It all started when i'm trying to downgrade from lion to snow leopard, I cleaned up my HD from disk utilities and it was a success after that i inserted an OS X snow leopard installation disk then when i rebooted my iMac it just shows grey screen then started to beep.

HELP! Please

How do you know this RAM "is good" for this computer?

It would appear the computer does not think so.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2341

Either the RAM is still problematic, or the machine itself has a hardware problem.

Either way, I would take it in for warranty service.

charlie

Hi boggslabayen,

That reply was for the original creator, but for you it might help if you reseat it, sometimes that's the only issue.

You can type in your serial number into this website or just find your model to find out how to reseat the RAM in these manuals http://support.apple.com/manuals/

Once you've done that, try doing a PRAM/NVRAM reset on your computer http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

Tell me if that works 🙂

Shane --

Perhaps the RAM sticks are not pushed in hard enough or seated incorrectly.

Or that RAM is the wrong kind.

Your Mac is very positive about it.

Look on About This Mac > More Info > System Report > Memory.

See what type is there, i.e., DDR3.

Is yours that type?

Hi lizardcarter,

Are u addressing that reply to me? Or the original creator of this thread? If its for me do i need to test my ram even if i didnt even replace my ram in the first place? I dont even know where is it located

TIA

That's what I was afraid of . . . You've put your Mac at pre-manufacturing OS status. That's why it's not working,not to mention it's for a different machine. There's no way that's going to work, boggs. If you did a complete 00000 erase, and put back the OS yur machine was built for, it MAY work, but you might have pushed it over the ledge.

boggslabayen wrote:

@ ~Bee comes with lion OS but I have an OS X Snow leopard from my sister's iMac

You do realise that even if it had worked to install, you wouldn't be able to charge or run from the battery?

iMacs don't need battery management software and it isn't included on the grey disc.

Ye I really suck on fixingntechnical stuff like this all I want now is to fix my iMac whether Lion OS or Snow Leopard. Should i bring it to mac center or are there step by step instructions u can provide? Thanks in advance

I'm having this exact same problem! Same 13" MacBook Pro, will be a year old in Nov. If I try to turn it on it beeps in 3 x sequence. Tried PRAM and just keeps on beeping x3. Tried turning it on on Safe Boot and after a couple of minutes starts beeping too.

BTW, I had my original box and I thought I had the Initiating DVDs (or whatever they are called) in the black box, but I cannot find them. Anybody know how I can get a new set of those?

As you're still in warranty, take it in for hardware diagnostics.

If the MB shipped with Lion there won't be any DVDs.

Go to  > About this Mac and read off the OS version; 10.7.x is Lion (no DVDs), 10.6.x is Snow Leopard (2 grey DVDs)

Then you probably have the late 2011 model (which I have - I have the 13"). It did not come with any installation disc. It came with Lion pre-loaded and your have to use the Recovery partition to install Lion anew (over the Internet).

As noondaywitch says, you're still under your one-year warranty. If the three beeps are a RAM problem (which they probably are) Apple can replace your RAM free of charge (assuming that you didn't replace RAM yourself). Take your unit to your local Apple Store and have them deal with the problem.

Good luck,

Clinton

my macbook is 3 years old and i opened up the ram today and noticed there was a thin layer of white dust covering the gold pin slots. i re inserted the ram and closed everything up and got the 3 beebs for the first time ever. i then found that it has to do with ram so i went back in and wiped of the dust using a microfiber cloth, reinserted the ram firmly and not it works perfectly fine.

hope that helped!

Hi all

My MacBook mid-2010 has been absolutely fine until last week when on boot up it displayed some Matrix style characters falling down the screen, and then after a few restarts it started giving out the three beeps. I read a bit online, bought myself a dinky 00 Phillips screwdriver and about 20 minutes ago removed the two RAM modules and swapped them around. Sadly it is still beeping and I'm going to take it into a Mac store unless anyone has any advice for me. I'm gutted to be honest, I have an iBook G4 from 2005 and it still works fine, if a little slower than the newer ones. I only replaced it because it had an 80GB HDD and couldn't be expanded :-(

Any help appreciated.

Hnt

I have been doing upgrades all day at work, I have 2 13inch mac books that started the 3 beeps after restarting due to a software upgrade, 10.7.3 to 10.7.5 combinded update.

I booted into diagnostics and ran extensive test with no issues shown. I took the ram out and "reseated" it, still same issue.

I can boot into anymode, diag, recovery, safe, etc...with out issue.

Out of the 130 computers I updated today, these are the only 2 that gave me issue.

Any ideas here...

I encountered this problem after upgrading my RAM on my MacBook Pro 5,4.

Although it looked like I had adequetately installed the RAM -- i.e., it was well seated -- in fact that was the problem. I removed the RAM and reinserted it and my problem was solved.

Hope this helps someone else out.

Good luck to all.