3 loud beeps when trying to start - won't start up

apple macbook wont start up and just give 3 loud beeps - then stops and does same again grey screen whilst trying

Hi Niel, my problem is a little different. I had an error message to restart while checking emails. When I tried to reboot, computer will not start and Beeps 3 times continuously. I reset the ram but it didn't make a difference. It is a fairly old 20" early 2009 iMac that I upgraded to snow leopard a few months ago. Is it time for a new one?

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Backed up my MacBook pro running snow leopard. trashed a bunch of old files. everything was running fine.
I shut down and restarted.
It makes the tone but no apple icon. Then three loud beeps over and over. Sounds scary.
Never had this before. What does it mean? It sounds serious.
Thank you,,
Patrice

Hi Patrice,
That usually indicates a problem with RAM.
Try troubleshootingthe RAM. Shut down. Disconnect power adapter and remove battery. If the RAM youhave installed is not the RAM provided by Apple, remove that RAM and installthe Apple-supplied RAM. If you don't have the Apple-supplied RAM, or youalready have the Apple-supplied RAM installed, remove one module, try booting,move that module to the other slot, try booting, repeat with other module.
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Won't wake up and beeps when trying to

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Myles Taylor wrote:
I usually plug in my Time Machine Drive every night and back up my computer. Last night when I went to do it, I plugged in the 500 GB USB drive and when I did, I got a loud beep out of my computer and the harddrives didn't show up on the computer. When I unplugged it, I got the same beep. I tried rebooting the computer and the drive with the same results. Any idea what's wrong and if it's the computer or the drive?
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Wednesday, October 1, 2008 5:27:55 PM US/Pacific
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-ZRS

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(By the way, your post shows you're running Tiger; you might want to update that.)

3 beeps when trying to install, but ram is fine

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(83154)

Default beep when trying to restore CS5

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Three beeps when trying to install snow leopard

Hello there,
I bought a MBP early 2011 on ebay but it has a problem, it gets stuck on a white screen with the apple logo and a spinning wheel. so i decided to buy a new hdd and os x snow leopard. when i try to intall snow leopars onto my computer, the MBP beeps 3 times, i did a research and looks like its a ram problem, but i try my rams on my pc and they did work. so i would like to know how can i fix this problem and could it be caused by the worng os x, i have os x 10.6.3 ( bought it from apple). do you guys think i need a newer os x. thank you in andvance.

Look up your computer on the everymac.com web site and find its exact specifications, including supported OS versions. Early 2011 model sounds too late for Snow Leopard to me and will require whatever was current at the time. It could well be one of these models capable of booting to the Internet (though you may have to deal with Apple about resetting the owner AppleID).
On the RAM, maybe it is good, especially if you find the error was the OS version. Even if it wasn't, trying in a PC is not nessarily the diagnostic test. I recall reading Macs can be more picky about RAM.
on this webgae it says
Pre-Installed MacOS:
X 10.6.6 (10J3210)

3 loud beeps when trying to start - won't start up

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