2011 Macbook Pro 3 Beeps/Freeze

@wednesdaykid By your own words it sounds as if you've been careless with your macbookpro. They should be robust but you can't expect them to take knocks without something happening and you can't expect Apple to replace your machine if you've not looked after it well.

I'm getting kernel panics that cause a total freeze up. It could be the software but I've been told what to do to help with the trouble-shooting. After a crash and reboot, open up console when the machine has re-booted and save a copy of the system log. This will tell you what was running at the time and help to isolate the issue.

I thought I'd solved it by opening her up, removing and cleaning the fans, loosening and lifting the motherboard so I could blow all the dust out, re-seating the thermal sensorsand re-assembling. It was running beautifully for a week but it's started mis-behaving again now.

Having the same issue - works fine but every so often it will just start beeping and freeze up.

Does anyone know if it's possible for both RAM modules to go at the same time - I've swapped them round and tested one at a time to not much avail

Has anyone found a solution for this - beside the logic board - or are there any other tests I should run to find out what it could be

thanks

Hi there, got the same problem...with same MBP. I live in Germany, and we have, by law an extended warrantry of 2 years!! Sadly I bought my MBP through Apple online order in NewYork... and I might not get so lucky to get the extra year of warrantry.

Anyhow, my issues started with 'giant pixelation' of my screen and freezing, from sleep mode. Wiping of the the pixel layer (with the mouse/cursor) it revealed the login screen and I could restart, but still it was scary.. This happened more & more. Until 3 weeks ago,first the 3 Beeps,and freezes, than it totaly blacked out. Though the front light was still on. I tried all known keyboard combination there are, but nothing. My MBP would'nt restart.

So I thought to try to remove and clean the ram, but because I had a 750 GB drive installed at Apple, they "sealed" the lid.. Because of our extended warrantries (which I may loose if I open the Mac) I made an appointment with Apple care, for which I had to wait a couple of days. After 2 days I thought let me try again through target mode, and voila it came on. Afraid it would crash again I only made a drag & drop backup (as I forgot before to backup with TM..yes, bad girl..but hey, happens to the best of us ;-) )

Now at Apple care they run the MPB through there checkup, and of course nothing really showed up, a part for some small faulty code on the system, which the guy told me was not major, and would recomend to reinstall the system. So okay, I agreed (knowing I would have to drag and drop all my stuff back to my MBP..grrr..)

So I got back my laptop 3 days ago, and started to put everything back on, until...beep, beep, beep...Yep, yesterday it crashed again..so I'm pretty anoyed about the hole subject. I understand you plawn, not to want to buy anymore Apple products. I'm too a over 20 yrs loyal & defending (..why do you have to have a Mac, get a PC it's cheaper stuff...) Apple user, but they make them less and less userfriendly in terms of home repair and reliability! But still you pay a lot of money for an elite & used to be good product.With crappy customer care, unless you're willing to pay an extra 300 bucks, for an extended warrantry...

well, lets see what they come up with when I bring my laptop back to Apple, unless there is somebody out there who found the reason/solution for our problem..

Exact same issue as you, plawn. It started happening right after I installed a OWC SSD on my 15" Macbook Pro (mid 2010). I love the SSD and has made the multiple startups bearable. I first thought the problem came from the new hard drive, but now I have isolated it to the bottom memory slot, so the last half hour I've carried it around, but running only on half memory. Hopefully, this will work, or I can try to isolate the sticker. it seems like replacing the logic board may not be the solution, which would cost me $450 for a new one…and I'd rather avoid that. I will try to take it out and see if there is anything messing with the memory slot. I agree, this blows, I wouldl ike this computer to last another few years, like my old iBooks that I ran for 5 years with minimal problems

Update the may help someone out:

I realized that it was the lower (from the bottom, so actually, upper, the one closest to the keyboard) RAM slot that didn't work, both sticks were still good, they passed a bunch of cycles of Rember and both worked when I had them in the working slot. I ran the computer on half RAM (one 4GB stick) for a few days, not one problem.

Today I took out the logic board, cleaned out LOTS of dust (3.5yrs of computer lint) from the heatsink/fans and weird particles that were touching the back of the RAM contacts. I have been running it for a few hours now and no problems so far. It used to be that every time I picked it up or moved it slightly, the Macbook Pro would freeze up, or have strange, colorful bars across the screen and then 3 beeps on startup. It would sometimes start working again after restart, if I gently tapped it, or closed the lid and reopened it. It also seems to run a lot cooler, so added bonus there.

My theory is that something conductive was shorting out some of the RAM contacts on the backside. I just wanted to offer this as another solution that is a lot cheaper than replacing the memory, or the logic board, at least as a first attempt at fixing it.

Now I just have to hope that it keeps working…

Actually, the cleaning didn't work…I'll have to run it on half RAM…

3 Beep Freez-out.

This is happening to me; I have a 2011 MBP 8.1 running OWC 2x8Gb; even though all the online references says RAM problem. I think that, after dozens of tests, it's a physical problem. I have swapped 6 RAM cards in singles and pairs in both the upper and lower slots, run the computer without the bottom cover, sprayed compressed air over and though every visible orifice, eventually the unit fails; in mid operation or on start-up. AHT shows nothing.

At a certain point I would think that APPL would see this fault sequence as a persistant problem, and devote some resources to a fix.

I have always resented, since the early '80's the industry habit of using customers as their primary Q/C resource, but I stay with APPL because the alternatives are simply much worse.

I echew the "genius Bar" simply because I don't want to turn my machine over to some tween with little communicative skills, whos' first soultion is to obliterate all my data. Yes I have TM and iCloud and two remote HD's, but still, contemplative thought and delicacy of discrimation are not the trademarks of the Bar.

So my MBP is on the D/L and I have solved the problem by buying (it's the solution APPL really wants you to take) a new iMAC.

Our problem is that this problem is not worth fixing. The unfortunate who spent +3K$ holding on to an at best $900 machine does not recognize the form our HT society is in; dispose of your problem. From the late '70's I have dumped Apple II, Mac 512K, LC, two iBooks, and three iMacs because I value my time. At say $100/hour when I have spent 10 hours trying to solve some $900 hardware problem, I move on to another unit, to move on with my projects. I put the machine on injured reserve, and bring in a new player.

I've been dealing with this same freezing/3 beep issue myself for a couple weeks after upgrading my early 2011 MacBook Pro with 16 GB of OWC RAM. I'm running OSX 10.6.8, with an OWC 6G SSD in the main bay, and an OWC 3G SSD in the optical bay. The problem also happens on the stock 4 GB of RAM that came with the machine. After a trip to the Apple Store and seemingly every remedy imaginable from reseating the ram chips to zapping the pram and smc, I was about to give up hope.

Then tonight I came across this google forum page, below, and couldn't believe what I was reading. It seems that there are a lot of people on 10.6.8 that have experienced the freeze and three beep problem because of an apparent conflict with Google Drive. As I was reading the page, it occurred to me that a good amount of the freezes happened right after bootup, when Google drive and my other menu bar applications are loading. How the three beeps come about, even though the three short beeps are only supposed to refer to an issue with ram, I have no idea. I should also note that I have experienced freezes without the three beeps.

I've disabled Google drive from launching into the menubar after boot up, and hopefully this will finally resolve what has been a torturous process for me. For a while, I thought I was going to lose my mind!

Here's the link:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/drive/NVy9cxgkL_g

@dringofett

Wow, Wow, Wow. So I killed off all my Google Drive stuff on my machine, reinstalled the OWC 16Gig and wailed away on reset and shutdown/power on for the rest of the day, say 60 cycles; the machine is running without a hitch.

Coincidence?

It will be interesting to see how many of the folks above have GD on board.

Thanks for the help, 10 points for you.

@works for me,

I'm very glad that I could help, and thanks for the points! :-)

It was so incredibly frustrating for me, so I'm glad that I could at least alleviate a little frustration in others who are having the same issue. There was a point where I was freaking out to the point that I was scaring my wife. I was thinking about the incredible investment I'd put into the machine and the upgrades, only to be left with a pricey brick. It was soon after that freakout that I discovered the forum page detaling the conflict with GD. It's always darkest right before the dawn, I suppose.

FYI, on another thread related to this same problem, someone found success by taking the Dropbox menubar app away. I personally have had no problems with Dropbox since deleting GD, but I've taken it out of the startup sequence just to be careful.

BTW, I had a follow-up convo with my genius at the Apple Store to let her know how I'd solved the problem. She was very interested in what I found, and said she planned to run it up the chain of command. I have no doubt that eventually this issue will be resolved in a future upgrade of GD. Even so, I'm so gunshy now that I think I'll be sticking with Dropbox as my only cloud service.

I discovered a potential source of the issue. This solution at least allowed the user to resume using Gdrive, but it isn't clear if it will crop up again.

I found that someone had logged into a different Google account using Safari. Even when I was resetting all the google preference files in their user account (~/Library/Application Support/Google/ ~/Library/Preferences/com.google.* ~/Library/Caches/) as well as removing keychain entries, when a fresh install of Google Drive was opened it was asking to authenticate to a different google user.

This wasn't happening in a different OS X user account.

So I removed all the files/folders related to Safari in ~/Library (a Safari reset didn't do enough) and have since had no problems with using Google Drive. No errors, and no freezes.

Will have to wait and see if this starts again but for now this helped.

I have the macbook pro 2010 i7 with 8g ram, running osx 10.9.2, 256g ssd, add the laptop cooler to cool the machine to room temp. And drill 300 holes in the bottom to keep it low and with good air flow.

the problem on my mbp is very similar, it can freeze without any reason. sometime the screen will all mess up and noise all over.

sometime it will beeps 3 times. and contiue on.

usually I will press the power switch for few second to power it off.

If I try to switch on right away it might either beep 3 times or

the screen is black but I can see the front white LED on, but nothing happen.

How I try to get it on again.

1. I will try SMC reset, shift+control+option and power all press same time for 10 sec, then release,

repeat this 3 times then turn it on. most of the time this will work

2. or disconnect the power cord for 15 sec, then back for 5 sec, then power it up.

this way also work.

But the problem is this has been happen for the last 2 weeks, on average 3-4 x a day.

Hope some one can suggest how to fix this

thanks.

@dringofrett

Thanks for the come-back, my MBP is running without a hick-up so far, thanks to you. And like you I am going to be a bit wary of just dropping GD all over my OSX machines.

Frustration has a price and when it impacts your peace of mind and productivity, it's time to take

some deep ujjayi breaths and put the problem machine in the past. I my case my MBP was headed for occasional and desperate use only, but I did spot an interesting resource Powerbookmedic. They have some well done disassembly videos, used parts for sale and they will buy your smoking hulk MBP.

I do hope that this gets up to GOOG/APPL central command. I sent a note over to OWC; they maybe getting a bunch of warranty return RAM, that is actually right as rain; and wondering why. The GD link gives them something to look at.

So thanks again.

I brought my computer into the Apple store 3 times and they replaced the logic board the first time. The next time they replaced the RAM (even though I had tried two sets before). After it still did the 3 beeps, I was told to format the computer and then install everything one by one to figure out if it was a software issue. That would have taken me so many hours I would have been furious to have to do so.

Instead, I quickly did a search for "software 3 beeps macbook" and found this. I disabled google drive from the login items and now the computer hasn't frozen up once. I'm kind of upset that not only was I the one that solved the problem by looking here myself, I paid $310 plus tax to get the computer back with the same problem every time. There was also a crash log that I found that showed google drive being a culprit. I wish I could have found this earlier and saved the cash.