MPB 3 beeps/artifacts/freeze... should I return optical to optibay before genius?

[terzinator]

Kind of a two-parter here... my wife's MBP 2011 is doing the occasional three beeps (during use, not startup), and then the screen freezes with weird artifacts, etc... any ideas on what it could be? Logic board?

Anyway, gonna make a genius bar appt to have em take a look-see...

The real question is this: I have an HDD in the optibay... do I need to return the optical drive to the optibay? (Meaning, will they look at that and deny warranty service if they see the modification?)

 

[duffer6]

Kind of a two-parter here... my wife's MBP 2011 is doing the occasional three beeps (during use, not startup), and then the screen freezes with weird artifacts, etc... any ideas on what it could be? Logic board?

Anyway, gonna make a genius bar appt to have em take a look-see...

The real question is this: I have an HDD in the optibay... do I need to return the optical drive to the optibay? (Meaning, will they look at that and deny warranty service if they see the modification?)

Check your memory to make sure it is seated. 3 beeps a lot of times means the memory is not seated or partially seated.

 

[thundersteele]

The real question is this: I have an HDD in the optibay... do I need to return the optical drive to the optibay? (Meaning, will they look at that and deny warranty service if they see the modification?)

yes!

 

[terzinator]

thanks all... yeah, did a quick search, and looks like I SHOULD!

I'm gonna have a quick look at the RAM, and if it looks normal and seated and everything, then I'll take out the optibay and go from there.

Hopefully it's the RAM!

 

[Steve's Barber]

The 3 Beep thing has been haunting me for about 2 months now. I'm not convinced it's the RAM as it only happens every other week or so. (Note: No Apple service near by... I'd have to mail the thing in.) I left the house the other day while my MBP was cloning a drive and was greeted by the loud beeps again when I walked in the door.

Do you per chance have something called "Boom" by global delight installed? (It increases the internal macbook speaker volume). I've found one other thread here where the user is experiencing the same problem and is running this same application.

I reseated my memory modules a few days ago so we'll see what happens. Didn't see anything wrong at first glance though.

 

[duffer6]

The 3 Beep thing has been haunting me for about 2 months now. I'm not convinced it's the RAM as it only happens every other week or so. (Note: No Apple service near by... I'd have to mail the thing in.) I left the house the other day while my MBP was cloning a drive and was greeted by the loud beeps again when I walked in the door.

Do you per chance have something called "Boom" by global delight installed? (It increases the internal macbook speaker volume). I've found one other thread here where the user is experiencing the same problem and is running this same application.

I reseated my memory modules a few days ago so we'll see what happens. Didn't see anything wrong at first glance though.

Even if it is seated correctly if you are constantly getting the three beeps you may just have a bad memory module, this does happen time to time, rare but it can happen. I would run a memory test with TechTools or the like and then take it from there.

 

[terzinator]

Don't have BOOM...

Well, I brought it in and they couldn't find a thing. Did some stress tests on the RAM, and checked how it was seated, and it all checked out fine. No I/O errors. Nothing odd at all.

Got it home, and my wife booted up her machine, and after about 15 minutes, got the beeps again.

The interesting thing is that she closed Outlook, and hasn't gotten the beeps since then... hmmm... Microsoft? What? So, Boom... Outlook... could it be app related, where certain apps are using RAM in certain ways that are making it behave badly?

Anyway... we'll keep our eyes on it. Might be a logic board thing, perhaps, too... I might get in touch with OWC where I got the GSKILL RAM, but until I get a reading that says the RAM is bad, it's just a guessing game.

If we continue to link it to Outlook, I'll bring it back to the Apple Store and open Outlook, and have them run their tests again. (Assuming it can run while other apps are running...) At least maybe I could get it to beep when I'm there.

Further updates as events warrant...

Oh, on doing the optibay HDD/optical swap, I'm getting pretty fast at it now.

 

[thundersteele]

have you tried putting the original ram back in?

 

[terzinator]

have you tried putting the original ram back in?

That will definitely be one test I'll do!

 

[Mersailios]

have you tried putting the original ram back in?

I would also recommend doing this as the next course of action just to rule out the third party memory that's currently installed.

 

[terzinator]

I know it's a two-year-old thread, but someone PM'd me and asked if I'd found a solution, since they were having the same issue.

So, if anyone else stumbles upon this thread, searching for an answer to their problem, yep, it was the RAM.

Replaced it with different set, and no problems since.