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Re: iMac only firing up halfway

Avatar Euan Williams
Hi Eric,
startup chimes: recently resurrected a member’s elderly iMac with Tony’s repeated 5-sec chime signal. It turned out that the steel mesh radio interference ‘fabric’ close to one of the RAM chips had frayed slightly and strands were very close to, if not touching, the DIMM surface. Very carefully trimming back the frayed mesh fabric in addition to reseating the DIMMs finally fixed this. Take a careful look (even with a magnifying glass) at this area before you disturb the DIMMS. Just a "could possibly be" suggestion :-)

Re: iMac only firing up halfway

Avatar Eric Jervis
Good morning Mick, Euan, and Tony;I bought it from MacBank/MacRefresh. I had a reply from them yesterday and the chap there thinks it could be a CPU problem and asked me to check for that blue screen again; this was my reply —
I've just fired it up pressing Command + R, and I got the apple with the spinner below it, and then the blue screen with the black verticals. I kept the keys depressed for two minutes, released them and nothing has now happened for a further two minutes.
I don't imagine they'll get back to me before Monday now.
Euan, I have got another version of OSX on an external drive and I'll plug that back in and see what happens.
Tony, it was definitely ten seconds, I watched the second hand of my clock. Its a 27 inch iMac and the thought of having a look inside frightens me! I'll give it a couple of hours before I start experimenting again in case you chaps have any further thoughts!

Re: iMac only firing up halfway

Avatar Tony Still
Eric,

27" iMac is one of the easy ones: there's a dedicated flap that lets you access the RAMs. You can see the instructions here. However, it's not clear that memory is what the chimes are trying to tell you.

Since it could be the RAMs, and is quite possibly a hardware issue of some sort, I personally think it's worth a try. Whether you go ahead is, of course, up to you.

Euan's point is certainly valid: anything conductive around the electronics is a bad thing. I don't think that should stop you from reseating the RAMs though - the whole point is to remake their connections in their sockets that can be prey to miscellaneous issues. If you're not confident though, don't do it.

Re: iMac only firing up halfway

Avatar Eric Jervis
Thanks Tony, that's a very helpful link. I am brave enough to do that but I think I'll wait for the response from the vendors first, they'll probably tell me to do the same thing as it sounds logical.

Re: iMac only firing up halfway

Avatar Eric Jervis
Hallo everyone, this is the response from MacRefresh —

Dayle Cartwright (MacRefresh Ltd)

May 21, 10:16 BST
Hello Eric, thank you for checking this for me.
In this case, the unit will definitely need to come in for a repair, as it sounds like the GPU is encountering errors and cannot be initialised, causing the system to hang or reboot every time it tries. Unfortunately there's no way to repair this remotely, due to it being a hardware sided fault.
If you would like to send it in for warranty repair, please let me know and I will pass you over to our aftercare team who can supply all the return details for you, and answer any further questions you may have.

Kind regards,

I have asked to be passed to the other team, and will keep you chaps informed in due course.

Re: iMac only firing up halfway

Avatar Tony Still
It's a shame you have the problem but that's a very positive response from the vendors so you should be OK - best of luck.

Re: iMac only firing up halfway

Avatar Eric Jervis
Thanks Tony, I've just arrived back in Angleterre, and in the morning I'll have to sort out the return delivery to Ipswich, as the Parcel Monkeys let me down twice before I went away!

Re: iMac only firing up halfway

Avatar Eric Jervis
Gentlemen, the iMac has just been delivered,by the most reliable parcel firm I've ever known, DPD, exactly on time, undamaged, and I've just fired it up and it works perfectly.
In years to come, if I ever wear it out, I shall definitely order one again from MacBank/MacRefresh. I've emailed them and telephoned them on several occasions and in every case had a friendly and helpful response from someone who knew what they were talking about. In addition to all that, Macrefresh have sent me an invoice for nil pounds. That's what I call a warranty.

Re: iMac only firing up halfway

Avatar Tony Still
Excellent news; I also agree about DPD (they're German you know).

Did they say what was wrong?

Re: iMac only firing up halfway

Avatar Eric Jervis
I didn't know that but the Germans have always had a reputation for efficiency. It was the CPU,their man had sussed it out before I returned it as I'd passed on to him all the advice I'd had from you chaps and what experiments I'd done as a result. So thank you all for your input.
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