iMac 24 inch 7,1 SOS beeps

An iMac is beeping when switched on. Beeps are 3 short, 3 long, 3 short:

beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeep, beeeeeeep, beeeeeeep, beep, beep, beep

Basically SOS

So far I've tried:

1. swapping RAM with working computer
2. swapping power cable with working computer
3. holding down D and other keys

Looks like its a EFI ROM corruption. Could possibly be the battery. Will try replacing the Battery first. Here's a tutorial on it

27" iMac fans on full

After moving an iMac, i switched it on to find that its fans were blowing full blast, making quite a noise.

I tried:

• switching it off and back on
• restarting it
• reseting pram
• switching off, leaving it a while and switching back on again

none of these worked. I came across this article in apple knowledge base. reseting smc worked a charm.

Basically switch off, unplug for 15 secs, plug back in. Done

Deploying 802.1X wifi profiles on OS X 10.6.6

I've just been told that the wifi routers and settings have just been updated and all MacBook Pro's need these settings updating too. Specifically for the 802.1X system Profile for logging in Wirelessly. I've put a few posts up about setting that up, and thankfully these new settings are very similar to the old.

ICT Services told me that the new wifi was WPA2 + AES, and had a different name.

What I really wanted to know was whether I could 'deploy' these settings to all the computers I administer. Well, it looks like the answer is 'Yes'.

I found this forum which discussed some command line tools which export and import, and change the settings. The command line tool was "networksetup" and I'm sure I've used it before.

Before starting down this route, I decided to look at the GUI, and I found that you could simply export all your settings as a file, double click this file to load it up on another computer. This, for the time being, was quicker (I realise not in the long run), but as my Short Term time was limited, I had to resort to it. Basically:

1. Set up one computer with profile and make sure it works
2. In Network Preferences, highlight Airport and click the cog at the bottom of the list
3. Select "Export Configurations..."



Airport Export Configurations...

1. 
   
4. I selected all the settings to export, thought there was no harm in this. Just being comprehensive.



Airport Export Configurations dialogue box

1. 
   

Loading this file on another computer worked just fine. Though in the end I just worked out all I had to change was the the previous System profile used the new Network.

I'll come back to the "networksetup' command line utility though, as it is the proper solution, meaning it could be fully automated - the ultimate solution.

External Display blue screen on old 17" iMac with OS X 10.6.6

Well, after re-imaging one a computer suite of old 17" iMacs (2005/6 model I think), the one set up with the Interactive Whiteboard, when set to mirror displays, went blue on both screens! When I remoted into it, it appeared fine, but still showed the blue screens on both monitor and projector. I tried many different combinations. It appeared when I rebooted the screen would come back to normal and then when I logged in under users which I'd played around with under their settings it went back to showing the blue screen.

One of the problems might have been because the minimum requirement for 10.6 is 1GB RAM and these had 512MB. I thought also that the graphics cards might not be supported in the latest OS.

So I played around a little more, seeing if there was a certain display setting which worked and it appeared there was. I left it for a day and came back, woke it from sleep to find had reverted. I thought it might be the graphics card setting it to sleep which might be the cause of the problem.

I did a few searches and came up with this post which I found in this forum,which proved to work, although as it was an iMac, the energy saving pane looked like this:

I put this to "Never" for both of these. Seemed to fix the problem so far. I shall update this on Tuesday to say if it's still working.

I also had these macs energy saver pane controlled by the Xserver (from workgroup manager). I set workgroup manager preference to "best performance" but it appears this only puts the Display sleep time to "3 hours" (looks like a safety feature). So I had to turn off this preference control and set it manually on this computer.

No preboot keyboard shortcuts working on White iMac 17" and 21"

We've had both 17" and 21" white iMacs for about 5 years and in that time I've re-imaged them at least 5 times (once a year) using NetBoot (hold down "N" on preboot). But recently I've noticed that these iMacs no longer register any pre-boot shortcuts including reset PRAM ("alt" + "cmd" + "p" + "r"). This means if I have a problem with them (i.e. if the hard disk fails) I won't be able to work any magic on them. Luckily I've not had any trouble yet but in time it'll need sorting out.

I originally assumed it was the last image i'd put on them, or the way in which I'd done it but noticed, but I didn't think that would effect anything pre-boot, like firmware.

I've done a few searches and found mostly mentions of Bluetooth/Wireless keyboards having this issue and one mention of 3rd party keyboards, but no real success finding anyone with this particular problem. I did a few more searches and found this which does sound more promising. The only difference being it does holding down "c" and "alt", but I didn't try these as I just assumed they would work after trying PRAM reset and "cmd" + "s" single user mode. (Never assume anything!)

A person down the bottom says the PRAM battery might have failed, which would make sense as they are over 5 years old and are unplugged for large periods of time (for security measures). The next question: How to replace battery in old white iMacs?

For the time being I shall just have to rely on them working and use the system prefs to alter startup disk.