Foo - what does it mean when your new mac does this......

no wisecracks that it means we spent good money for nothing, etc please.....:rolleyes:

we got a new iMac a few months ago.

Yesterday it started making a weird noise - like there is a small timer ticking away rapidly inside. Seems to be emanating from the left area of the monitor, and it is quiet when the computer goes to sleep.....it starts up again once you reactivate the screen

no other issues or symptoms we can see other than that.

any thoughts?

Some dust on the fan, maybe?

can you describe the noise a little more? It could be anything from a failing hard drive to, like AllenG said, some crud in a fan. Could be a failing LCD power supply too. Any problems with the LCD picture? I do mac support for a living, and have heard a lot of noises, like i said, try to describe it more and ill see what i can come up with.

QUICK, THROW IT AWAY! It's gotta be a bomb! Hurry before you end up like jsharr's sushi! --sorry, coundn't help myself.

can you describe the noise a little more? It could be anything from a failing hard drive to, like AllenG said, some crud in a fan. Could be a failing LCD power supply too. Any problems with the LCD picture? I do mac support for a living, and have heard a lot of noises, like i said, try to describe it more and ill see what i can come up with.

hmmm......like a steady ticking sound. If you've ever heard what an electronic timer sounds like - like a timer light rotary switch - you turn the knob for however many minutes you need light for and then the knob ticks along till the time has elapsed and then the lights go off. These units typically make a steady ticking sound - thats what this is like. Not very loud, but audible.

The picture looks fine, everything else appears to be functioning normally.

I'm telling you, IT'S A BOMB!!!

Haha, is it by chance the side of the cd/dvd rom drive? If so, maybe a disk thats super scratched was loaded and maybe is stuck in there? Where is the sound the loudest? (top, side, bottom left, etc).

Also, does it sound mechanical (something physically hitting something else) or electronic (a sound from a speaker) in nature.

It's a bomb! Litearlly.

There was a computer like that at work. What happened was the line voltage line wasn't tied off and the fan in the power supply was nicking it. Eventually the thing wore through the insulation and the thing shorted out.

My MacBook Pro does the same thing sometimes - like when converting an mp4 or m4v to DVD format and then burning the DVD. It's the hard drive. Don't worry, be happy you bought a Mac. :beer:

1. It's on the left side (opposite the optical drive side)

this morning it's not doing it......hope it wasn't a fan that cut through anything!!:eek:

Did you remove the LBD's?

I would just cough this one up to Mac gremlins. There's definitely plenty of them, but I don't want to go there.

out of curiosity -- and while I use macs - never owned on - but does the system light go on (like pc) when it ticks?

The Mac's system light is similar to a PCs, only in standby mode, the LED flashes, gradually growing brighter and slowly turning off each second or two, as opposed to the discreet blinking of the power light on most PCs.

Did you remove the LBD's?

remove the what, now?

Sorry, it's a joke. I thought you might have read the HELLLP!!! I need LBD's!!! thread. LBD's are "decals that hold your equipment together". The laptop I'm using now ticks when using the hard drive, so I agree w/ RonH.

Just make an appointment at the genius bar or whatever. They should tell you what is up. Hope you got the extended warranty!

The hamsters that really power the damn thing want out, of course.

turn off Spotlight indexing... This will also fix the problem with your external USB drives becoming read-only after a while.

It's trying to say, "You shoulda bought a Windows-running PC," but it can't quite bring itself to get the words out. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v102/deraltekluge/Avatars/whistling.gif