My iMac hasn't made the startup chime in a while. I never paid much attention before, until I realized that my volume was up on my computer before starting/restarting, but still no chime. I remember reading that the chime is an indicator that everything is working right, so if there's no chime, does it mean something is about to go wrong? I don't think I've had any serious problems lately, and I just did a clean install about a month ago. Please relieve my fears and tell me it's probably nothing serious.
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no startup chime
- Thread starter JonD25
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Do you have any external speakers plugged in? Does everything look fine in the Sound pane in System Preferences? More comprehensive settings can be found in Audio MIDI Setup in your Utilities folder...does everything look okay? (Pretty much everything there should be set to "Built-in Audio" if you're not using external speakers.)
this shouldn't matter. i have external speakers plugged in and i hear the chime every time i restart. still, it might have something to do with the preferences.
the only time i've not heard the chime is when i shut the computer off with the volume muted; OP - are you sure the volume is turned up loud enough that you would be able to hear the chime?
I agree that it shouldn't matter. But I suppose there could be a loose connection of some sort that is muting the internal speakers and yet not piping the sound to the external speakers...why only on startup I don't know, but I'm just throwing stuff out there. It's unlikely, but it's always best to have as much info as possible when helping troubleshoot.
Crap, I figured it out. Because the chime always sounds from my internal speakers, not my external, and I always have my external speakers plugged in, I didn't realize that if I unplugged my speakers, the volume was set to mute. I must have muted it once and then plugged in my speakers, so the chime never sounded.