Hope I'm in the right forum. My iMac (3.06 GHz Intel i3) has been making a very strange noise. It seems to be coming from the right lower side. It's a steady pop,pop,pop. I have to force quit the imac to stop it. It actually woke us up last night, took me a minute to figure it was the computer. I've brought it in to a Mac store, they kept it over night and not once did it happen. Before I bring it in again, I was wondering if anyone else has had this problem. When it first started happening it was more of a crackling sound, but the sounds seems different now. If anyone can offer some help, I would appreciate it.
I take it that it makes the noise all of the time? You mentioned "I have to force quit the imac to stop it." You can't shut the machine down when this happens or are you force quitting just the Finder or something?
From what I can see the only thing in the bottom right is the speaker, with a fan above that. The hard drive, power supply and video cards are more towards the middel of the machine. It's possible that the popping noise is being caused by some kind of electrical interference making a noise through the speakers.
Does the noise go away if you unplug everything except the keyboard and mouse? If you have a wireless keyboard and mouse even better, then nothing could be plugged in to test. If it is still making the noise with the keyboard and mouse plugged in, unplug those too, although I don't see how they could cause interference but you never know.
Make sure thre are no phones or other electrical equipment near the computer.
Next thing to try is to see if it is a noise coming from the incoming power, plug the computer directly into the wall bypassing any power strips or surge protectors, have nothing else plugged into the wall socket. If it still makes the noise plug it in at some other place in the house, preferably not on the same circuit as it is now, maybe far away in another room.
MacBozo Nut Dood
Registered: 04/21/02
Posts: 17704
Loc: Pinellas Park, Florida
Originally Posted By: Reboot
Hi Deb, welcome to the forums.
I take it that it makes the noise all of the time? You mentioned "I have to force quit the imac to stop it." You can't shut the machine down when this happens or are you force quitting just the Finder or something?
From what I can see the only thing in the bottom right is the speaker, with a fan above that. The hard drive, power supply and video cards are more towards the middel of the machine. It's possible that the popping noise is being caused by some kind of electrical interference making a noise through the speakers.
Does the noise go away if you unplug everything except the keyboard and mouse? If you have a wireless keyboard and mouse even better, then nothing could be plugged in to test. If it is still making the noise with the keyboard and mouse plugged in, unplug those too, although I don't see how they could cause interference but you never know.
Make sure thre are no phones or other electrical equipment near the computer.
Next thing to try is to see if it is a noise coming from the incoming power, plug the computer directly into the wall bypassing any power strips or surge protectors, have nothing else plugged into the wall socket. If it still makes the noise plug it in at some other place in the house, preferably not on the same circuit as it is now, maybe far away in another room.
You read my mind. My MacMini (external speakers) picks up electrical line noise from time to time. Sometimes it's a light switch being switched on or off or, the most annoying, the AC/heat kicking on. I think we had a bad contact on the outside compressor last winter, which caused all kinds of noise on the speakers. It hasn't happened this winter, though.
Thanks for the reply. The "noise" does not happen all the time. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it, there is no one thing that starts it. At first, I thought it was my external speakers, so, I unplugged that. There is nothing else plugged in, have both the wireless keyboard and mouse. The last time it happened, was 2:00 am, computer was "sleeping" as was I, and the noise started. I guess my wording was misleading regarding quitting. When the noise starts, the computer freezes up, I have to manually shut it down with the start button in back of the iMac. I'll try plugging into a separate outlet. Right now its in a surge protector.
Unless you are having some kind of incoming A/C power issues, noise, surges, drops, bad surge protector, that may be causing it, it seems like it's probably a hardware problem if it happens when it's sleeping and it locks up the machine. Hard telling what it is, first guess is power supply though. Does it run okay other than that?
If you have Apple Care take it back and insist that they find out what is wrong.
I do have Apple Care, and will definitely bring it back again. I was hoping to be able to tell them something. It does have a few other issues that I don't think should be happening. It freezes at least once a day. Occasionally it won't wake-up from sleep. When I put in a cd it takes forever to open, putting a file in the trash can sometimes take much longer than I think it should. Since I got it back, Safari will not work. If I'm lucky the hope page will open, and than nothing, it says application not responding. If you don't mind I'm going to put a screen shot of the console, you will notice the same line over and over. Any meaning, or typical ?? Sorry for so much info, I just want to be able to say something that makes sense when I take it back.
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