iMac Beeping Noise

Ok, First of all im not entirely sure if this is the correct forum to post this as i couldn't really find a correct thread to post for help.

So the past couple of days i have been experiencing a "Beeping Noise" It usually happens every 15/20 minutes, I have had my imac my for a year and have never experienced this before. I have a firewall running and i am always careful of what i download. I have run a couple of virus scans the past couple of days as well using virusbarrier express from the app store and it has found nothing virus based. I have also, reset my mac and also checked that i have no other programs running, it still manages to do this, i have to have my volume on as well to be able to hear it.

I moved your question to the correct forum - here in Apple Desktops forum.

About the beeping.... Let's try to see if we can isolate it.

Start your iMac up in "safe mode". Hold down your shift key as soon as you hear the chime. The machine will boot to safe mode. If the beeping occurs in safe mode, then we'll know it's hardware related. If it doesn't beep, it means it's being caused by some program or process.

Boot back to normal mode. Open your Activity Monitor - Applications, Utilities, Activity Monitor.app. Leave it open and try to watch it for any activity that may be causing the beeping. Also, think back... have you recently installed any programs or devices? Perhaps a program that you installed and then removed?

As far as scanning for viruses go, it really isn't necessary as there are currently no viruses for the Mac that are in the wild. There is malware, but no viruses.

What model of iMac do you have?

chscag said:

I moved your question to the correct forum - here in Apple Desktops forum.

About the beeping.... Let's try to see if we can isolate it.

Start your iMac up in "safe mode". Hold down your shift key as soon as you hear the chime. The machine will boot to safe mode. If the beeping occurs in safe mode, then we'll know it's hardware related. If it doesn't beep, it means it's being caused by some program or process.

Boot back to normal mode. Open your Activity Monitor - Applications, Utilities, Activity Monitor.app. Leave it open and try to watch it for any activity that may be causing the beeping. Also, think back... have you recently installed any programs or devices? Perhaps a program that you installed and then removed?

As far as scanning for viruses go, it really isn't necessary as there are currently no viruses for the Mac that are in the wild. There is malware, but no viruses.

Click to expand...

Ok thanks for the reply and moving my thread, I will try safe mode. Also with you saying that there is only maleware for macs, what kind of software is there for macs that i can scan for any sort of maleware that could be on my mac?

rabbitjetta said:

What model of iMac do you have?

Click to expand...

How would i check this? I only got it at the start of the last year and it was the top of the range one at that time

chscag said:

I moved your question to the correct forum - here in Apple Desktops forum.

About the beeping.... Let's try to see if we can isolate it.

Start your iMac up in "safe mode". Hold down your shift key as soon as you hear the chime. The machine will boot to safe mode. If the beeping occurs in safe mode, then we'll know it's hardware related. If it doesn't beep, it means it's being caused by some program or process.

Boot back to normal mode. Open your Activity Monitor - Applications, Utilities, Activity Monitor.app. Leave it open and try to watch it for any activity that may be causing the beeping. Also, think back... have you recently installed any programs or devices? Perhaps a program that you installed and then removed?

As far as scanning for viruses go, it really isn't necessary as there are currently no viruses for the Mac that are in the wild. There is malware, but no viruses.

Click to expand...

I have put it into safe mode, but it isn't letting me adjust the volume levels and is saying there is no output for sound, i won't be able to hear if the beeping noise will occur as you are only able to hear it with volume up

Free Mac Antivirus, Mac Security and Protection | Sophos Free Tools
Or Free Antivirus for Mac OS X | iAntivirus are the ones that I recommend.

I have put it into safe mode, but it isn't letting me adjust the volume levels and is saying there is no output for sound, i won't be able to hear if the beeping noise will occur as you are only able to hear it with volume up

Click to expand...

That's OK. In safe mode the sound driver is disabled. The reason I asked you to do that is to make sure that the beeping wasn't being caused by hardware. Now we know that it's caused by a program that's running or process that's running in the background.

Boot back to normal mode. Open up your Activity Monitor.app from Applications, Utilities. Keep it open and look for any activity that may be causing the beeping. When you find it, remove it.

As for checking for malware, you can use the suggestion made by member rabbitjetta or you can download the free ClamXav 2 from here.

I like clamxav as well. I would use that Sophos seems to be the best for malware.

chscag said:

That's OK. In safe mode the sound driver is disabled. The reason I asked you to do that is to make sure that the beeping wasn't being caused by hardware. Now we know that it's caused by a program that's running or process that's running in the background.

Boot back to normal mode. Open up your Activity Monitor.app from Applications, Utilities. Keep it open and look for any activity that may be causing the beeping. When you find it, remove it.

As for checking for malware, you can use the suggestion made by member rabbitjetta or you can download the free ClamXav 2 from here.

Click to expand...

So i have opened activity monitor i don't really know what im supposed to be looking for

The Activity Monitor application shows you what processes are going on, CPU usage, and so forth. You need to look for something that may be causing the beeping. Have you recently installed any programs or drivers and then removed them?

chscag said:

The Activity Monitor application shows you what processes are going on, CPU usage, and so forth. You need to look for something that may be causing the beeping. Have you recently installed any programs or drivers and then removed them?

Click to expand...

I believe i think it started happening, after i used team viewer, i was trying to use parralles and had to contact support they needed to do something on my mac for something to work so they sent me a link to install team viewer or something and used it afterwards i removed it beacause i wouldnt use it again, but i tryed searching for teamviewer on my mac and there is no files, on activity monitor i wouldnt know what to look at because even if i close everything there is still loads of proccesses running still ?

You may still have some remnants of "Team Viewer" on your machine. I looked for instructions on how to completely remove it but all I found were instructions for removing from Windows.

The problem with Team Viewer for the Mac is that it's still a beta and may have some glitches. Here is the LINK for their support. Maybe you can contact them and find out if that's what is causing the beeping.

If none of that helps, you may be forced to reinstall in order to get rid of the annoying beeping.

chscag said:

You may still have some remnants of "Team Viewer" on your machine. I looked for instructions on how to completely remove it but all I found were instructions for removing from Windows.

The problem with Team Viewer for the Mac is that it's still a beta and may have some glitches. Here is the LINK for their support. Maybe you can contact them and find out if that's what is causing the beeping.

If none of that helps, you may be forced to reinstall in order to get rid of the annoying beeping.

Click to expand...

thanks for the help, ive just sent them a email, what do you mean, reinstall back to factory settings? as i have my timemachine set up and restore from that, will that beeping noise start again do you think?

It depends on when you made the Time Machine backup in relation to when the beeping started. In other words, can you restore back far enough in time before the beeping started?

chscag said:

It depends on when you made the Time Machine backup in relation to when the beeping started. In other words, can you restore back far enough in time before the beeping started?

Click to expand...

Ok so i contacted both teamviewer and parallels support and they both said it isn't to do with them, parallels told me to get in contact with apple support now. Do you know whether they have online chat support or is it just phoning them up?

With my time machine, it backs up every day So i don't think im gonna be able to restore back to before the beeping started

I don't think it's a hardware problem and it's likely Apple support will refer you back. Unless you have Apple care, they'll charge you for phone support and they do not have on line chat.

Have you thought about doing a reinstall?

chscag said:

It depends on when you made the Time Machine backup in relation to when the beeping started. In other words, can you restore back far enough in time before the beeping started?

Click to expand...

Ok i think it is fixed now after contacting apple. They told me to do alot of tests and resets.
What fixed it i think was by pressing alt, cmd, R and P on start up.
But ill let you know what they told me just in case you need to pass onto any other members.
They told me some things you already told me such as.
Reset and check activity monitor and test in safe mode by pressing Shift on start up.
They also told me to test by creating a second user and test while logged into that one.
They also told me to turn off the mac and unplug everything including the power supply for 30 seconds.

They told me to press alt, cmd, r and p on start up before creating a second user as well, so by pressing alt, cmd, r and p then log into the second user to test, then if it doesnt occur test on your main account.

Thanks for the help guys, the beeping noise hasn't occured since contacting apple support since 6 hours ago when it usually occurs ever 30 minutes to an hour but i will return if it does, thanks again

OK, great. Glad to hear the annoying beeping is gone. Have fun and visit us often.