Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Failure to boot, only clicking sound

M

MaxZero

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 11, 2011
16
0
Hi. I recently moved house and took my late '06 iMac with me

Upon un-boxing, the machine will not power up when the power button is pressed. There is however1 a faint clicking noise that can be heard round the back the machine, it doesn't have a sequence and its frequency is on average twice or three times per second.

This sound starts once power is connected as opposed to when the power button is pressed so I'm hoping it isn't the hard disk and just the power supply or something

I've made a recording but the quality is terrible and doesn't sound much like what it actually sounds like but it may help give an idea
http://www.filedropper.com/recording-1338326453

Can anyone can offer a suggestion as to whats going on?
Thanks in advance
 
If I were you I would be hoping it’s the HDD and nothing else. A new Power Supply would cost a lot more than an HDD.

With that said, I hope you have a backup (Time Machine or Otherwise) because that kinda sounds like a dead hard drive to me. Usually it’s about the only thing inside a computer that will click. I’ll admit your recording doesn’t sound like an HDD clicking but I can’t think of what else it would likely be.
 
do you get no power at all from the machine? if the hard drive was dead it'd likely start up and then give you the folder with a question mark because it'd be unable to locate the drive. is it to the point where you cant even boot from the disc drive because it doesn't power on?
 
You said you moved.

You may have to open it up and make sure memory and drives are seated and didn't rattle lose.

Mine was dropped, and one Simm was popped.

Hope its something simple
 
Heres hoping its something simple too, thanks for the responses.

It would be excellent if it was a loose connection inside, i've re-inserted the memory on the off chance but no joy. Looks like its a trip to the fixers at any rate
 
MaxZero said:
Heres hoping its something simple too, thanks for the responses.

It would be excellent if it was a loose connection inside, i've re-inserted the memory on the off chance but no joy. Looks like its a trip to the fixers at any rate
Click to expand...

Or maybe consider to buy a new one since it's probably not going to be cheap. Let's hope for the best but anything could happen to a 6 years old machine.
 
My 2006 iMac is limping along and I'm nursing it through to the "upcoming" refresh.

Harddrive died with the bouncing ping pong ball sound so had that replaced, but I do have some problems with the power unit too.

My fix for this is to pull the power cord out and slowly push it back in and jiggle it a little. Every now and then you can hear a faint spark. Only when I hear this will the power button work.

I never switch it off anymore to get around this problem although I did also move apartment at the weekend which required me turning it off. It took two days before I could turn it on again (albeit I had other things to do rather than concentrate on this all the time).
 
That clicking sound was the first sign of a total hard drive failure in my 2006 iMac.
 
I've had a hard-drive health monitoring thin gummy running on the machine and its not reported any concerns there. If the repair is suggested as under £300 however i will go for it. Having just left university I've started my hunt for work so a replacement is not fiscally feasible at the moment.
I would say I've certainly gotten my moneys worth from it, in its lifetime its had two logic board failures, the CD drive has been replaced (and the new one gave up three or four years ago). That was all under applecare thankfully.


On the penultimate day of the previous houses tenancy (before the move), we had a suspected power surge which tripped everything at the breaker and required the cooker's plug socket to be replaced before the power could be flipped back on. The iMac wouldn't boot but plugging it into a different socket solved it, it was on during the surge but then so was a lot of other things that were unaffected. Probably coincidental

Nehoo thanks for the replies guys, helpful and interesting as always

(Still have a performa 5200 with its original HD, working well :p )
 
Last edited:
It's almost definitely the PSU. If it was the HDD, fans etc. would still spin up.
 
Clicking sound... my gut instinct is the hard drive has gone. I'd put good money on it if I were a gambling man ;)

Best way to test it is if you have somebody else's mac hard drive you could test in place of your own. Failing that, if you boot to the Mac Install disc and go to Disk Utility, you can find out more info there about the current state of your drive. If you are able to boot to the DVD then you can safely assume the problem is nothing more than the HDD. Do you often power down without doing a proper shut down?
 
Hi all. After taking it to an Apple store to have an engineer sort it, they have confirmed it was the power supply and replaced it for £56, more than half what I was expecting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back