imac giving off loud tone

Discussion in 'iMac' started by vinmacguy, Sep 26, 2006.

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  1. vinmacguy, Sep 26, 2006

    vinmacguy macrumors newbie

    Joined:
    Sep 26, 2006
    #1
    my trusty ol' blueberry since 1999 has recently started giving off a loud tone during start up. it sometimes starts up in a terminal looking text line asking if i want to continue to boot...type "mac-boot" which i do...but then nothing happens so i have to re-start and it boots or i have to put in a OS 10.3.9 boot disk...even though it has the original 8.6 on it.

    soooo whats goin on? help..
    thanks
     
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  2. beatsme, Sep 26, 2006

    beatsme macrumors 65816

    beatsme

    Joined:
    Oct 6, 2005
    #2
    sorry, can you clarify? You're running OS8.6 on the machine? Or are you running both OS8.6 and OSX10.3.9?

    I'd check your firmware against the Apple website and see if you're up to date. And in any case, I'd ditch OS8.6 (which completely sucked IMHO) and at least upgrade to OS9.

    Could be your HD is failing, too. If it's the original HD from 1999 I'd have to consider it a distinct possibility.

    EDIT: in my experience, a weird tone during startup is usually indicative of a hardware issue. Just so you know...
     
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  3. nagromme, Sep 26, 2006

    nagromme macrumors G5

    nagromme

    Joined:
    May 2, 2002
    #3
    What's the sound exactly? Macs have different startup chimes that indicate different conditions (none of them good :( ).
     
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  4. vinmacguy, Sep 27, 2006

    vinmacguy thread starter macrumors newbie

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    Sep 26, 2006
    #4
    clarification about that tone

    i am running a partitioned disk with both 9.1 and 10.3.9 on it. the thing is.. i switched hard drives to give to a family member and did the system restore to put everything just like new..and it gave me that message.... i was thinking it may be a firmware problem not a hard drive problem since it did it with two different hard drives..

    as far as the tone..it was NOT the chime of death...nor the chime when resetting PRAM...it was like a TV no signal tone.

    thanks for feedback
     
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  5. wchong, Sep 27, 2006

    wchong macrumors 6502

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    Sep 18, 2006
    Location:
    Miami, Fl
    #5
    maybe the fans are being obstructed by dust?
     
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