Beep tone on startup; Main disc not showing in Utilities

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Beep tone on startup; Main disc not showing in Utilities

After having repairing my hard disc with Utilities (having started up from my Install Disc holding C key) and being okay for a day, the thing seemed to crash again.

Came home and the machine was off, not just asleep. Tried to start up, heard a single long beep tone, then the regular start-up chord, but it just hung. Then started up off the Install Disc holding D key, did the Appple Hardware Test, Extended, and that just stalled after a while - as it did each time before - and also the Mac was making a not-good-sounding whirring, hum noise.

Started again off the Install Disc, this time holding C key, went to Utilities to try a Repair again, but this time the hard disk was not even showing in the Disk Utiliity!!! Yikes!

Anything else to try or is it time to take it to the Apple store?

Posted on Apr 14, 2012 11:21 AM

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Answer 1

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BDAqua

Level 10

238,979 points

Apr 14, 2012 11:48 AM in response to poflynn

Yikes, might be time for a visit, but...

1 long tone when holding down the power button

Firmware upgrade in process. See About firmware updates for Intel-based Macsfor more details.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2538

Can you count the beeps or flashes?

1 beep = no RAM installed

2 beeps = incompatible RAM types

3 beeps = no good banks

4 beeps = no good boot images in the boot ROM (and/or bad sys config block)

5 beeps = processor is not usable

In addition to the beeps, on some computers the power LED will flash a corresponding number of times plus one. The LED will repeat the sequence after approximately a 5-second pause. The tones are only played once.

Note: In this case, a flash is considered to be 1/4 second or 250 ms or greater in length.

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