What's going on with my G5? - Funny noises, etc.

[baravelli]

So, for a few weeks now, my G5 has been occaisionaly and inexplicably been making the sort of clicky boopy noises that you would normally expect to hear when it's starting up, or going to sleep. Just, y'know, in the middle of completely ordinary computing, not correlated with any sort of special activity. It hadn't done that before, and I didn't know what to make of it. I usually leave my computer on for long stretches, but I put it to sleep at night. Last night, I was awoken by the fans suddenly kicking into high gear, and sounding like Apache attack helicopter. But the computer was still asleep - and wouldn't wake up! I had no choice but to hold down the power button to turn it off, and I left it off for the rest of the night. This morning, I came back and powered back up, and everything seems OK. But, how worried should I be about this sort of behavior? Anybody have any ideas what it might mean? Thanks.

 

[quigleybc]

Have you recently upgraded to Tiger?

Cuz the majority of Powermac G5 users, have experienced all kinds of crazy sounds coming from there machines after the Tiger update....

My crazy sounds include,

1. Fans going nuts, for no reason all the time
2. Chirping/Beeping sounds when doing something graphic intensive (like the RSS screensaver)

3. intermitant chirps/beeps for no reason..

All the above are reportedly normal, however annoying as hell....

 

[baravelli]

Nope, my machine came with Tiger pre-installed. Like I said, this issue only started up a few weeks ago. Could it be a heat problem?

 

[TMA]

The fans going into overdrive is a protection feature of the G5's. In the event that the fan controlling software could be in danger of failing, all fans go into full speed to make sure the CPU(s) are kept cool. It means your machine has completely crashed and it's just making sure it can keep itself cool.

I had this problem under Tiger when I installed a PCI card to add extra USB ports. Whenever the machine went to sleep it would do exactly what you're describing after a random amount of time.

Remove accessories one by one from PCI bays and USB ports and you might find a culprit.

The other noises your describe could be anything. Mine has 2 hard disks and the second randomly spins up when I'm using any sort of file browser (e.g Save dialogue) This makes clicking/whoosing sounds. My optical drive also makes bleepy/clicky noises at random. There's also the whole chirping issue (do a search and you will find tons of info on this) where the machine will beep every second or so when its idle, and screech/bleep when its active.

 

[hcuar]

Nah... the fan thing happens about every other update. They spin up and then slow down. The beeping thing is the same problem... Some updates make it worse than others. It was always there.