[DM-MUG] problems with MacBook Pro [small one] in Chile

[AB]

When the motherboard is failing, there's a beep from the mac internal speakers. The obscure message is in at least 5 different languages but it doesn't say "motherboard is failing" so I took it to a certified Apple Tech and found out. He was able to take out the drive. I converted it to an external drive. then it failed 7 months later.  

Good to know about the SMART monitoring tools. 

-AB

--- On Wed, 10/21/09, Matthew Nuzum <newz at bearfruit.org> wrote:

From: Matthew Nuzum <newz at bearfruit.org>
Subject: Re: [DM-MUG] problems with MacBook Pro [small one] in Chile
To: "Des Moines Mac Users Group" <dmmug at dmmug.org>
Date: Wednesday, October 21, 2009, 1:42 PM

I had a maxtor hard drive that gave an audible notification when it was failing. I liked that feature a lot. Had the case been too well insulated or I been unable to hear the beeps then the only way I'd know is if I (or the computer automatically) used a SMART drive monitoring tool that gave me a visual notification.


I had a server once with SMART monitoring built into the system bios. When I rebooted it one time (purely coincidentally) it alerted me to the impending failure before booting. It gave me a, "hard drive #1 is failing, press any key to continue" type of error message.


The point is, there are monitoring tools based on SMART that will alert you when the drive starts generating an abnormal number of errors, which is a warning sign of impending failure. It may be that you have hours or minutes left, or it may be that you have months left.


You have to run the tool over a long period of time though. It will gather statistics at regular intervals from the drive (this takes only a split second to do) and look at the statistics to identify abnormal behaviour. If your drive is failing the SMART won't know if the number of errors it's measuring are typical or atypical.


On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 12:42 PM, Jon Thompson <jon at mac-consultant.com> wrote:

If the beep is from the hard drive, then no. If it is a Mac OS X Beep, you can turn on the flash screen option in the Universal Access SysPref.

On Oct 21, 2009, at 12:27 PM, Stuart Thiessen wrote:
Just curious as a Deaf person, any visual notifications we can look for instead of the beep? :)

Thanks,
Stuart
On Oct 21, 2009, at 10:35 , AB wrote:

Apple Care will pay for shipping if she bought Applecare and it has not expired.if it beeps on start up with a ?mark it is a start up systems folder issue and she's lucky if it boots and should not shut it down untill she's sure she wants to and willing to accept it may not start up again. I'd call Apple. or to circumvent the $50 phone call tech support fee for non-applecare products, she could call an Apple Store and ask the Genius, then she'd have to find a certified and authorized Apple Technician to work on her laptop in Chile.


Sounds similar to the warning beeps I've had with harddrive or motherboard issues.

-AB

--- On Tue, 10/20/09, Victoria L. Herring <VLH at HerringLaw.com> wrote:


From: Victoria L. Herring <VLH at HerringLaw.com>
Subject: [DM-MUG] problems with MacBook Pro [small one] in Chile

To: "MUG Des Moines" <dmmug at dmmug.org>
Date: Tuesday, October 20, 2009, 1:51 PM

Our daughter has a 12/13" MBP and is in Chile in a tiny town.  She 

just called [Skype] and says that the machine is running really slow, 
takes a minute to open up applications and it beeps at her.  She is 
running Tiger still.  She is also moving off the computer everything 
she wants to save.


Any thoughts on what is going on or what she can do?
-- 
Victoria L. Herring, Des Moines, Iowa. Blogs: 
http://blog.JourneyZing.com  [photography]; 

http://www.herringlaw.com  [civilrights/discrimination]; 
http://victorialherring.typepad.com/serendipity/  [personal].

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-- 
Matthew Nuzum
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