iMac Locking up and beeping

I

iamangie70

Registered
I have a 21.5 inch, Mid 2010 iMac, 3.2 GHz Intel Core i3
8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
I am running OS X Lion.

For a few months now it would just randomly lock up and make a horrific loud static sound and the only way to make it stop was to unplug it. Recently that stopped and now it locks up and beeps 3 times, pauses, beeps three times and continues this beeping pattern until I shut it off. I am able to shut it down with the power button when it does this.

I had read some posts on the apple site, some posters were saying it had something to do with the RAM but nothing in detail. Yesterday it did it 3 times so my husband reseated the RAM last night and it seemed fine. Now today it just did the lock up and beeping thing again. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Angie
 
Download the now free MemTest.

The zip should be 147KB and the resulting pkg 209 KB.

Follow the directions on the site since you no longer have a separate application to start:

Test your Macs RAM

Once you have installed memtest for Mac, launch the Terminal and type the following command:

memtest all 2

Memtest will take a little while (15+ minutes is not unusual) and you’ll see an actively updated screen like the screenshot above showing progress of the app. The command will test your RAM twice, which is generally enough to detect errors, but for unusual system freezes and crashes it can be a good idea to test your memory longer by removing the ’2′:

memtest all

Without specifying a number of passes at the end, the app run a long time but can be stopped any time by hitting Control+C in the terminal window. Letting memtest run a while will consume a lot of CPU cycles so if you’re going to run the utility on a Mac laptop be sure to plug it in first.
Click to expand...

THAT should tell you if you have bad RAM. Best tests for it! Easy to remove that as a possibility. Bad RAM tends to fail the tests quickly.

--J.D.
 
You do have bad RAM, from the sounds of it. Beeping like that are typically POST failures, and in this case three beeps relates to bad RAM.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1547

Have you installed aftermarket RAM? Macs tend to be a lot more fussy about RAM quality than PCs (which just crash randomly with poor-quality RAM); perhaps remove that RAM and see how you go.

I tend to only buy RAM that has been qualified for Macs from places like Other World Computing, and in the last 10 years I haven't had any RAM problems. Other people I know, it's a different story, but usually because they bought the absolute cheapest RAM possible.
 
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